My cat Shadow is in the hospital tonight. He’s having surgery in the morning to clear a bowel obstruction; he’s a pretty sick baby. I was able to visit him for a short while tonight before they hooked him up to IVs to try to rehydrate him … the poor guy was so terrified. Most animals would be in that situation, but it’s worse for him; when he was 9 weeks old, he slipped out between the kids and licked up a drop of antifreeze in the garage. An hour later, I found him in a coma. A miracle-working all-night vet clinic managed to bring him back, but he was left with significant brain damage. He’s forever a kitten, even though he’s 12 years old and 20 lbs when he’s healthy. He weighed 13 at the vet today.

It took a couple of years for him to learn to bathe himself again, with the patient tutoring of the household mama cat, Rogue. He gets lost if he goes around the corner of the house and the dog has to bring him back. He climbs up to look out the window and falls off the back of the couch. But yet he has an incredible memory for certain things. Once several years ago, when I was taking a platter of turkey out of the frig, a piece fell off the plate and landed in front of him. To this day, he sits and cries in front of the frig, waiting for “turkey from heaven.”

If he comes through this, he can have all the turkey he wants. I’ll probably buy him some salmon, too.

The battle to overturn the election of Gov. Christine Gregoire (D) took an ugly turn this week when Martin Ringhofer of Soap Lake filed challenges to the voting credentials of hundreds of people, saying he thinks they’re illegal immigrants who registered and cast ballots illegally. The challenges were filed in 11 counties, including Spokane.

From the Spokane Spokesman-Review:

Ringhofer said he obtained a list of people who registered to vote when they obtained or renewed a driver’s license, then culled the list for names “that appear to be from outside the United States,” particularly those that appeared to be Hispanic or Asian.

“We eliminated names that clearly sounded American-born, like John Smith, or Powell,” he said Wednesday.

SNIP

State statute says the person filing a challenge must prove “by clear and convincing evidence that the challenged voter’s registration is improper,” (Spokane County Auditor Vicky) Dalton said.

“Otherwise, a flood of unsupported allegations could have a chilling effect upon the ability of segments of the population to register and vote,” she said.

Ringhofer’s challenges in Spokane and the other counties don’t meet the strict requirements of the law, Dalton said. He filed a single document that says he believes people registered to vote without proof of citizenship and attached a list with 161 names; Dalton and other auditors have concluded he needs to file a separate challenge for each name, with any proof that he has for that voter.

I’d love to know if I’m on his list. After all, I have a vaguely ethnic last name which frequently arouses suspicion from airport screeners.

One of the strange side effects of my drugs seems to be that I no longer dream. I used to cherish my dreams, fighting off the alarm clock to linger inside them a bit longer. I used to be able to drift in my thoughts for hours, telling myself stories, imagining other places and lives, but that is gone now, too. Writing poetry eludes me; the metaphors which once came easily slip away before I can capture them. I’m even finding reading fiction difficult because I can no longer conjure up the characters and places in my mind.

I miss it.

Perhaps that explains the vague sadness that clings to me these days. I find no escape from harsh reality either in my own mind or within the pages of a book and so I simply exist in this one time and place and body.

Maybe all the people in my life who have told me to keep my feet on the ground and stop pretending things are ever going to be different have finally gotten their wish ….

Reported on Reuter’s News Network, Australian researchers seem to have identified the enzyme which destroys cartilage in mice. They are confident the same enzyme breaks down cartilage in humans, too. “This could lead to the development of inhibitors which can be prescribed to patients with arthritis,” University of Melbourne and Murdoch Childrens Research Institute researcher Amanda Fosang said.

Growing up, I lived and breathed sports. My passion varied, depending upon the season. As soon as the snow melted off the driveway, my best friend Randy and I were playing one on one, then a month or two later when the grass turned green and other friends could be induced to come outside, we turned to baseball. Twenty inning games were the rule; we even packed peanut butter sandwiches in the ball bag so we wouldn’t have to take a break for lunch. In the evenings we played tennis on the public courts at a nearby grade school. We only went home when the street lights came on.

So when I got my first regular paycheck at 13, I made two purchases — a guitar, and a subscription to Sports Illustrated.

Six months later I’d mastered the guitar, but canceled the SI. Why? I got the Swimsuit Issue in the mail. I was furious that instead of details on the women’s matches at Wimbledon, I got babes in bikinis.

That was 1973. 32 years later, the Swimsuit Issue is still going strong–it’s available now on dvd–and I’m still boycotting SI. (I refuse to link to them.) With the advent of internet news, I no longer even miss the sports coverage; there are plenty of other sources that don’t flash tits and ass at me in exchange for the box score.

That’s why I object to CNN.com linking to the SI Swimsuit Issue photo gallery every single day as if it were legitimate sports news. Both Sports Illustrated and CNN are owned by media empire Time Warner, which also owns AOL, HBO and Time Magazine. Time Warner makes the most of its corporate connections, shamelessly cross-promoting its publications. That means when kids use CNN.com to look up a news story for a school assignment, they also get an invitation to drool and gaggle over mostly-nekkid women posed in the most seductive manner SI can get away with.

I won’t even begin on the ways I believe this is harmful to our sons, but I can tell you just how damaging this is to our daughters. At an age where they should be receiving positive feedback for their mental and physical abilities, they’re being bombarded with images of silicon-enhanced, rib-removed caricatures of women. On a news site.

CNN should be ashamed of selling out their responsibilites as a mainstream news source in exchange for purient profits. As of today, my new official news source is Google News.

I’m also looking for other wide-spectrum news outlets not owned by Time Warner. Got suggestions? Please post them in comments.

An 1805 North Carolina law against cohabitation is being challenged in court by a lawsuit filed this week by a woman who says she was forced to resign from her job as a 911 dispatcher after her boss told her to either move out, get married or quit when he discovered she was living with her boyfriend. Sheriff Carson Smith said last year that Hobbs’ employment was a moral issue as well as a legal question. The penalty for this crime? A $1,000 fine and up to 30 days in jail if an unmarried couple of opposite sexes “lewdly and lasciviously associate, bed and cohabit together.” She is being aided in her suit by the ACLU of North Carolina.

From the News-Observer:

“I just didn’t think it was any of my employer’s business whether I was married or not, as long as I was good at my job,” Hobbs said in a statement. “I couldn’t believe that I was being given this ultimatum to choose between my boyfriend or my livelihood because the sheriff wanted to enforce a 200-year-old law that clearly violates my civil rights.”

In North Carolina, one of about half a dozen states with such a law, 33 people have been charged with the crime and 25 people have been convicted since 1997, according to the ACLU. There are 118,781 unmarried people of opposite sexes living in the same households in the state, according to the latest Census figures.

Had she been male, I wonder if the sheriff would have felt the same moral imperative?

For your entertainment and edification:

Have Coffee Will Write has a fascinating piece on why prosititution rather than gambling should be legalized in Ohio, if revenue is all that counts ….

Stupid Evil Bastard has this potential Darwin Award nomination ….

Church Of Critical Thinking has a great series on Scientology …..

Rox Populi has a thoughtful entry on how the left has abandoned women …..

Sherry Chandler has a special treat for you on her site today; an audio version of her poem Gravitas. She’s a brilliant poet and wonderful performer - give it a listen.

Back In Kansas

Can you tell me how to get back to the place that I remember?
Where the scent of sweet forgetting lingers over fields of poppies
And the path is golden,
Pure as the Tin Man’s heart.
They say I’ve never been there but I see it in my dreams.

A few days ago there was a great discussion on Feministe about tattooing and the ideal female body. Lauren’s theory was that women tend to do small, delicate tattoos in places easily hidden in order to be considered feminine, and shy away from larger, bolder “make a statement” tats. Many of the comments dealt with tattooing and piercing as a way to claim ownship of our own bodies. I agree.

When I was 41, I pierced my navel. I’ve struggled with body-hatred most of my life, and getting a silver ring put through my belly button was a step on the path toward a positive self-image for me. I’ve given birth to three kids, one by C-section, so my stomach is a battlefield of stretchmarks and scars. The vertical c-sec incision didn’t heal properly and is a red, bumpy ugly mess from my navel to my pubic bone. Except for a brief period around age 15, I’ve never had a bikini body, so for me it wasn’t an issue about exposing my stomach in public. It was bad enough seeing it myself.

Over the years I managed to detach myself from my body almost completely, viewing it as some alien thing I happened to live in. That detachment got worse when at 35 I was informed that my arthritis had spread to my iliac joint and there was nothing anyone could do about it. Until one day I was driving to the grocery store and saw a sign at the local dance studio offering bellydance lessons. I turned in, and signed up on the spot. My first teacher gave me the basics, and I moved on to study with A’isha Azar, who became one of my closest friends. She taught around my handicaps and made me a real dancer.

The most important thing she taught me is this: it’s impossible to do Egyptian-style bellydance in a rented body. You have to live and breathe and channel the music through your body until the artificial You falls away and only a visualization of the music remains. You can’t do that long distance.

So a piece at a time, began to claim my body again. Over the course of 6 years I integrated my legs, my arms and my breasts. Learning to do a shoulder shimmy was torture for someone who grew DD cups in the 3rd grade — I’d spent my life closing in on them and making sure they didn’t move, and now they were supposed to jiggle? But I did it, and was surprised at how free I felt.

All that remained to claim was my stomach. So I took myself to the piercing parlor at the mall and did it. It didn’t hurt like I expected; instead I found it invigorating. As I showed it off to my dance friends, I found myself feeling proud of my body instead of ashamed. A few months later, when it had healed enough to change the jewlery, I found the perfect talisman. A tiny pink zipper tab. It lined up perfectly over that long red scar I hated so much, and made a visual joke. I felt whole.

I no longer dance in public; I’m content to dance for my own pleasure and wholeness. But every time I feel the tug of my bellybutton ring against my jeans or shirt, I’m anchored back into by body and am reminded that in spite of it’s flaws, it’s a good place to live.