Marmy Fluffy Butt, Elongated

Those attentive readers who are familiars of Marmy Fluffy Butt will gasp at the virtuosity she allowed the camera to witness, and then, without the usual *ack*::*ack* contrarian fanfare, capture.

Since her feline version of IBS has been brought under control, she's in love bug stage, and can often be found attached to my left hip.  She challenges Buddy the Outrageously Large Maine Coon for Manor leadership about every other day, and has inflicted several warning slashes upon little Dobby's face when he moved in for an innocent traditional DNA check.

She's full of herself, in other words.

We like this version of a long, slinky Marmy Fluffy Butt -- she is not hiding out with abdominal pain, she is, in fact, stretching to new lengths, she winks at me and cracks the worst kind of jokes, then *ack*::*ack*s to her heart's content!

Should Marmy enthrall you, these two old posts describe how she got her and her reign since:
Wednesday's CatCam -- Full of Woe and Wednesday Morning Blahs.






Please allow me to share my etymological discovery of the day!  One cannot observe the magnificence that is Marmy without eventually entertaining the term "hoity-toity."  Most often, her attitudinal fluffiness causes a mental stutter, leaving you psychically mumbling, "hoity, hoity, hoiteeee!"  Ah, but... anyway! The term "hoity-toity" actually made snopes.com!

"Hoity-toity" begs for a hoity-toity origin.  And so was born an etymology with an accent, from an older world with smaller cobbled streets, and where the habit of looking down on people whilst sipping on a thick, caramelly espresso from the comfy vantage point of a limestone or bluestone or concrete tile perch:  "The term "hoity-toity" comes from the French words haut toit, meaning 'high roof.'"

Berlitz called it this way:  "The expression 'hoity-toity,' for ; pretentious,;  comes from the French haut toit — high roof — from which the pretentious looked down on the literally 'lower' classes."

In swoops snope to do what snope does:

Origins:   In common English speech, "hoity-toity" is an adjective used with disdain to refer to the pretentious, those who put on a show of pretending to possess refinement and sophistication (similar to "highfalutin"). So, some people naturally assume that such an unusual expression, referring to the cultured, must itself have a cultured origin — in this case a French-language reference to the (literal) upper class, people who looked down upon others from atop their high roofs (i.e., haut toit). 

"Hoity-toity" has nothing to do with French (or the French), however. The expression comes from our penchant for creating rhyming phrases such as "loosey-goosey" or "helter-skelter," and in this case its base is "hoit," an obsolete 16th century verb whose meaning is "to play the fool" or "to indulge in riotous and noisy mirth." ("Hoity-toity" was more commonly used to describe those who engaged in thoughtlessly silly or frivolous behavior before it became more of a synonym for "pretentious.") Attempts to find the word "haughty" to be an ancestor of "hoity-toity" are equally specious. 

I thought of mourning the loss of a lovely etymology.

Then, thinking of the Queen who prompted the whole half-arsed search, I realized how much closer she is to silliness -- *ack*::*ack* and a wink, followed by a seductive, round-bellied flop and presentation of one white-fuzzed, pink-skinned abdomen in need of rubbing -- than to serious haughtiness.








© 2013 L. Ryan

On the Bow

It may shock you to learn that no one but you, yourself, is responsible for your well-being.  There are sweet people who, by virtue of their job description or their innate goodness, will attempt to be of assistance and cheer, but it's not possible for them to make things right for you.

If you are going to insist on despair as your legacy, at least have pity on these kind folk, though they rarely need protection from us narcissistic idiots, having learned the secret of personal responsibility in utero or at the knee of a benevolent adult.

Turns out that my gracious Go-To-Guy, concierge physician to the stars, is under the weather, so our appointment is off.  Feel better Go-To-Guy!  However, being an orderly sort, I'd also arranged a needed visit to the pharmacy down the road from his office, his office being many, many miles away from Marlinspike Hall.  So the trip cannot be avoided.  This was enough to bring on tears and declarations about how I simply cannot bear the pain.

Then Buddy required a wheelchair lift to the kitchen -- he simply could not get there on his own. Necessary to the voyage was his stance on my lap, butt firmly fixed against my chest, chin raised against the sea breeze, his pose as close to Kate Winslet on the Titanic's bow.  I suppose, though, that Buddy'd prefer I say it better approximated the moment of Dicaprio's declamation: "King of the World."

Once shrimpy kibble had been served the Feline Triumvirate, once Buddy was convinced there was no available human food hid in my pocket, coffee was set to steep and my fine wardrobe transferred from the washer to the workhorse dryer.  Madame Marmy flaunted her fluffy butt, her wayward tail drifting into Buddy's food bowl now and then.  Dobby eyed the progress of the coffee, and precisely at the time of its distribution into mugs and such, he scurried to my hospital bed, as The Law clearly states "[t]here shall be no consumption of hot coffee, topped with a slight milky froth, until such time as The Runt, commonly known as 'Dobby,' has been brushed and in receipt of an ardent belly rub, as well as a tender cleaning from his eyes of that material called 'gunk.'"

In the precious conversational period book-ended by coffee intake, Fred and I did a quick gloss of the well-being concept with which I opened this post.  We even covered guilt, depression, and pharmaceuticals.  In dire need of a shower, I made public confession of my inability to take one. Moving right along, however, we did manage to agree that when he commenced his own shower, I would hobble to the half-bath and do a magnificent wash up at the sink, while seated on the toilet.
In sparkling synchronicity, we will emerge, like Venus on the half shell, cresting the waning waves as one, and hop into Ruby the Honda CRV and set out to do what needs to be done, impervious to the Human Condition.

We have two pharmacies to visit.  One for my drugs, and one that has prepared a compounding version of medicine for Marmy Fluffy Butt, who has a terrible case of the feline version of Crohn's disease.  We are having the medicine put in liquid form and chose a nice fishy taste to mask the terrible flavor of the drug.

The vet, the wonderful Dr. George, whose last name only an intrepid few attempt, gifted our girl with a Tranquility Collar.  She seems proud of it, its royal nature declared in purple hues, and displays it proudly, although with no signs -- yet -- of the promised tranquility.  She still believes Fred has betrayed her, allowing unspeakable examinations of her private regions, forcing foul-tasting goo down her throat.  She clings to me, and glares at him.

We hope that she will be fine, and soon.

Have a good day.







© 2013 L. Ryan Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Maybe there is hope, but hie, hie!

Maybe there is hope.  

I promised Fred that I'd wow him with productivity today, beginning with dealing with financial misdeeds, my favorite thing.  So I filed "cow udder balm" under The Castafiore's "operatic make-up products" (for which The Troupe reimburses us biannually).  So I managed to reroute the deposit of my automatic PCIP premium payment to my dear friend President Obama's "Hit List Necessities" (drone maintenance, mainly, and hostess gifts) -- with occasional faulty landings in the National Debt Fund morass.

Buddy the Freakishly Large Kitten, who, at age 2 is having another growth spurt (damn Maine Coons!), complete with a reappearance of his affinity for chewing wires, woke me.  He'd overheard the "productivity" comment and was going to be my aide in seeing it through.

Trouble was, I couldn't straighten my right leg, and who the heck knew where the left one even was?  My right arm was also misplaced, though I could definitively testify that the hand at the end of that arm was swollen and vcry cold.

"Pain pill," thought I, "and a cat with thumbs and whatever other attributes are necessary to the making of a good italian roast in my newly cracked cafetière, and once made, poured over the precise -- in measure as in temperature -- jigger of milk into my ugly green mug and brought to my thirsty lips... and not spilling a God-damned drop because I did manage to mop our wing of the Manor's West Extension yesterday, before falling into a coma."

And, again, as many times before in this blog, I long for a Pensieve.  ["The Pensieve is primarily a device for storing memories outside of one's own head."]  How many other bloggers do you know who long for a Pensieve?  Oh, hush up, Fresca.  (I miss Fresca.  We've never met, yet I miss her!)  Some people are just good people without the requirement of hoops, psychometrics, and disclosure of voting history.

See?  Now, YOU, too, wish for me a Pensieve.  And coffee, and such cats as are necessary to that coffee's procurement, and two 7.5/325 Endocet.  A veritable Peace Train of things.

Aha!  Never mistrust this mind, no matter how far gone, how medicated, how self-pitying, how covered with what appear to be moss-and-lichen twigs -- the lichen we attribute to my funkalicious osteomyelitis and ill-advised skinny dips in the moat during the off-season;  the moss can only be due to my crusty celadon-green Naturalism.  (Naturalism, where the Tea Party was meant to end up, those Baggers!)

But as Brother Yusuf Islam's vintage Peace Train now took over my brain, and its humming eradicated the harmonics of my pain and the displacement of my limbs, and the cats miraculously did manage to hoist my ugly green mug and precise coffee demands to my bedside table -- and after a mere 20 minutes of waiting for the meds to kick in... I grabbed the laptop to see how the world was.  And Peace Train went from thought impediment to badly gurgled half-tones to a full-voiced joyful rendition.  Feel free to join in:


Now I've been happy lately, 
thinking about the good things to come
And I believe it could be, 
something good has begun

Oh I've been smiling lately, 
dreaming about the world as one
And I believe it could be, 
some day it's going to come

Cause out on the edge of darkness, 
there rides a peace train
Oh peace train take this country, 
come take me home again

Now I've been smiling lately, 
thinking about the good things to come
And I believe it could be, 
something good has begun

Oh peace train sounding louder
Glide on the peace train
Come on now peace train
Yes, peace train holy  roller

Everyone jump upon the peace train
Come on now peace train

Get your bags together, 
go bring your good friends too
Cause it's getting nearer, 
it soon will be with you

Now come and join the living, 
it's not so far from you
And it's getting nearer, 
soon it will all be true

Now I've been crying lately, 
thinking about the world as it is
Why must we go on hating, 
why can't we live in bliss

Cause out on the edge of darkness, 
there rides a peace train
Oh peace train take this country, 
come take me home again


Why are you singing, all belly-free and without an inhibition in sight, much less on your shoulder?
Because even before I could locate the information necessary to determining whether the world had made it overnight, my eyes spied the title of an editorial:  "America’s Retreat From the Death Penalty."

Your voice is further buoyed by the small fact that it isn't a signed guest op-ed, or even a signed regular old tired op-eder.  It's a full-fledged New York Times editorial board piece.

There's not a brilliant bit in it.  There's no new information.  There's just the recognition that the whims and moods of America, as determined by its sorta-elected judiciary, have always determined the death penalty policies of this country.  But if you talk to Most People, Most People believe that there is a standardized, measurable, referable, repeatable standard that we keep in the Judiciary Closet -- something like units of measure that are convertible to any bloody, murderous circumstance.

It's true!  Once a decade or so, depending, we fight and tousle, then we remember the Judiciary Closet, where we have stored our imaginary Standards of Legal Measurement, and we all finally gather at the corner pub (or Applebees, if there be no corner pub in what used to pass for your neighborhood) to salute the good King Edwards of the 13th and 14th centuries:

When the Roman Empire passed into history about six hundred years after the time of Christ, Europe then drifted into the Dark Ages. For six or seven hundred years mankind generally made little progress with regard to standardizing measurement. Sometime after the Magna Charta was signed in the Thirteenth Century, King Edward I of England took a step forward. He ordered a permanent measuring stick made of iron to serve as a master standard yardstick for the entire kingdom. This master yardstick was called the "iron ulna", after the bone of the forearm, and it was standardized as the length of a yard, very close to the length of our present-day yard. King Edward realized that constancy and permanence were the key to any standard. He also decreed that the foot measure should be one-third the length of the yard, and the inch one thirty-sixth. King Edward II, in 1324, reverted back to the seed concept of the ancients and passed a statute that "three barleycorns, round and dry," make an inch. 

What?  Oh, I forgot to tell you.  The "Dark Ages" is just code for "hie, hie -- hie unto your metaphors!"  In case you're having trouble following, and who wouldn't, unless she had the assistance of Amazing Felines, Pharmaceuticals, and superb Italian Roast, the standardization of measurement based on what is purely arbitrary has links to both power and the most boring of everyday stuff (barley corns and ulnae), and on these standardizations we build domes, skyscrapers, knickknack shelves, and our opinions about the death penalty.  That last item means, you poor caffeine-deprived, bed-ridden sufferer, life itself.  Toss in the Pyramids and Chichen Itza, as well as most preserved Mayan architecture, and you'll agree with me -- we are some lucky sons-of-bitches, to have such divine wonders born of arbitrary forearms and the relative humidity of a seed.

Before I die, and I do believe this is going to be my year, finally, I'd love to see the Mayan "ruins." I don't know, though, whether they've been rendered handicapped accessible.  How it would suck to make it to the bottom of all that brilliance, only to find no wheelchair ramp.

I feel a  "We the People" Petition coming on.  I'm sure that  "We the People" Petitions cover USAmerican civil rights beyond the borders as well as within.

Anyway, we have stashed away, thanks to people like Napoleon, Jefferson, and Galileo's pendulum, brass bars as arbiters of the standards dissent that falls upon We the People from time to time.  Carry the metaphor over to the Judiciary Closet, and you'll see the main reason we fail at even discussing the Death Penalty with any reasonableness whatsoever.

That's why I stopped discussing it, unless bullied into it.  I mean, I once wore the tiara of DP Abolitionist for a small but brave-hearted Amnesty International group (we even managed to free a Prisoner of Conscience, upon which occasion we drank wine from wax cups).

But somehow, overnight, the editorial board of the New York Times realized that Right is Right, and published this, of which I'll give you a salivary striptease:

America’s Retreat From the Death Penalty 

When the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, it said there were two social purposes for imposing capital punishment for the most egregious crimes: deterrence and retribution. In recent months, these justifications for a cruel and uncivilized punishment have been seriously undermined by a growing group of judges, prosecutors, scholars and others involved in criminal justice, conservatives and liberals alike. 

A distinguished committee of scholars convened by the National Research Council found that there is no useful evidence to determine if the death penalty deters serious crimes. Many first-rate scholars have tried to prove the theory of deterrence, but that research “is not informative about whether capital punishment increases, decreases, or has no effect on homicide rates,” the committee said. 

A host of other respected experts have also concluded that life imprisonment is a far more practical form of retribution, because the death penalty process is too expensive, too time-consuming and unfairly applied. 

The punishment is supposed to be reserved for the very worst criminals, but dozens of studies in state after state have shown that the process for deciding who should be sent to death row is arbitrary and discriminatory. [Please click HERE for the remainder of the op-ed]

I almost feel that scoping out the rest of the world and what was done in it while I slept is unnecessary.  Over the cliff or not, who cares?  Aleppo, more dead, less, whatever!  Mitch McConnell grew a chin?  It was covered by his health plan and will help him govern more effectively. Hillary Clinton has faked yet another illness? (What do you expect from an hysterical female?  She probably couldn't hold an aspirin between her knees long enough to earn the Presidential Fitness Award.)

None of it matters.

Cause out on the edge of darkness, there rides a peace trainOh peace train take this country, come take me home again

I know, I'm being a gullible rube again.  Leave me to it, at least for the afternoon.  Let me be capricious in my generalizations of a Bunch O'Words, if it makes me happy.  Words matter.






Upcoming Scheduled Executions in the U.S.

All scheduled execution dates cited are tentative. A number of circumstances exist that can change the date.
To write a letter to stop any of the scheduled executions, please use this directory of government officials to direct your letters.


January
1/16/2013 Robert Gleason Jr. -- Virginia
1/16/2013 Ronald Post -- Ohio
1/29/2013 Kimberly McCarthy -- Texas
February
2/20/2013 Britt Ripkowski  -- Texas
2/21/2013 Carl Henry Blue -- Texas
March
3/6/2013 Frederick Treesh -- Ohio
3/21/2013 Michael Dean "Spider" Gonzalez -- Texas
April
4/10/2013 Rigoberto Avila -- Texas
4/16/2013 Ronnie Threadgill -- Texas
May
5/1/2013 Steven Smith -- Ohio
July
7/31/2013 Douglas Feldman -- Texas
August
8/7/2013 Billy Slagle -- Ohio
September
9/25/2013 Harry Mitts, Jr. -- Ohio
November
11/14/2013 Ronald Phillips -- Ohio
January
1/16/2014 Dennis McGuire -- Ohio
March
3/19/2014 Gregory Lott -- Ohio
May
5/28/2014 Arthur Tyler -- Ohio
October
10/14/2014 Raymond Tibbetts -- Ohio
January
1/7/2015 Warren Henness -- Ohio