The evil that men do

The viciously sectarian-hate monger Ian Paisley died today in Belfast, age 88.

Paisley, an ordained evangelical Protestant minister, was huge in the anti-Catholic campaigns in Ulster during the second half of the 20^th Century. To listen to his guttural voice spewing hatred on the news was to call to mind some of the speeches of the Nazi greats, spittle and all.

He fomented violence because, you know, God was a Unionist.

I understand British Prime Minister David Cameron pronounced Paisley “one of the most forceful and instantly recognizable characters in British politics.” Yeah, like Martin Bormann. Or Tomás de Torquemada.

(That would eat his lunch, being compared to a Dominican.)

We’re told that Paisley suffered from heart ailments, but I find that a bit of a stretch. Because you would need a heart in order to have problems with it.

Yes, in the past seven years or so, he acquiesced to the notion of a “shared” government in Northern Ireland. But by that time both Ulster and Britain had reaped the whirlwind he’d sown with such fervor.

My take is that whatever good was in him leached out of his bones at least 70 years ago; the evil he is responsible for will be with us for a long time.

Working cats

It’s a universally acknowledged fact that cats pretty much rule the Interwebs.

Oh, yeah—you got yer Dog Shaming sites and yer international anti-dog-poop reports and yer police dog Twitter accounts. But basically, without cats and cat videos, no one would have bothered to build out the ARPANET. No eBay, no Drudge Report, no nude selfies of Anthony Weiner going viral.

Well, maybe that last one is a bit of a heavy burden to lay on the feline spine.

In the proud tradition of How Cats Saved Civilization, then, here’s a story from NPR about distillery cats. Those are the hard-working…er, diligent…um. Well, distillery cats fulfill a vital function in ensuring that those precious waters of life keep flowing, on both sides of the Atlantic.

In times of yore, they protected the grain used in distilling whiskies from marauding mice. Apparently they were fierce and fearless in the pursuit of their duties, as evidenced by Towser the Mouser’s Guinness entry of 28,899 kills at the Glenturret, the oldest distillery in Scotland. (Although I do worry about who might have been keeping track.)

These days, mousing skills aren’t as important as they used to be. I expect that EU and FDA helth regulations have reduced a distillery’s options as to how they can store grain, so non-human vermin aren’t as problematic as they might have been 50 years ago.

But—and this is kind of a self-fulfilling beauty of the Internet—it seems that having a cute, photogenic cat purring around the visitors center is instant and almost free marketing. Hint: it’s not photos of a plastic thimble of whisky in the tasting room that people are tweeting the hell out of.

I got a kick out of the still master at the Woodford Reserve distillery in Kentucky admitting that no one knew whether their long-time resident cat Elijah was any good at mousing, because “everybody fed him. He didn’t have to mouse that much.”

But he gave great photograph.

Well, different times, different capabilities. The thing I really like about these distillery cats is that even when they’re sleeping on the job, they’re on the job. They’re the perfect employee—working 24x7.

Sadly, Glenturret’s most recent DC was struck by a car and killed just before NPR’s story aired. But look at what a great job he was doing:

The real mistake is if they keep their jobs

Wow. According to the Telegraph, here’s the situation report two weeks after it was revealed that over a 16-year period, 1400 girls were systematically raped and abused by a group of men in Rotherham (South Yorkshire), while police, politicians and public welfare representatives did nothing:

In a nutshell, those on whose watch this happened for years are still courageously admitting that mistakes were indeed made, by...someone, but that they personally really didn’t know what was happening and therefore their responsibility is limited, and of course, their moral culpability is nil.

The director of children’s services (and, in the context, ain’t that an oxymoron of a title?) told a parliamentary committee, and I swear I am not making this up, “All of us could have done better.”

And, therefore, she should keep her job.

The town council’s chief executive also slithered up to the committee and admitted that key files with details on the years of organized child rape by “men of Pakistani heritage” have gone missing, unaccountably. (He won’t specify whether they were destroyed, just that “they are not within the council’s archives.” Which is why you bloody well need cloud back-up.)

But he never saw two of the reports on the abuse-on-an-industrial-scale that had been submitted to authorities (one in 2003 and one in 2006), so, really…not his fault. Year after year after year, not his fault.

The chief police officer of the area doesn't appear to have graced Parliament with his presence, but he's definitely singing from the same songbook. About knowing nothing.

What’s interesting to me is the “we’re not criminal, just criminally incompetent” explanation. It’s not like we haven’t seen that before from people trying to evade prison sentences. I’ll be curious to see if it’s a good career strategy.

Because the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. And these people have demonstrated that they know how to do just that one thing very, very well.

Uomini...

Okay, this photo was on an Italian gossip Facebook page:

There are just so many stories one could spin from this picture, one hardly knows where to start.

Among the many interesting comments was one insisting the man is looking at the bottle in the retreating woman’s hand. After considerable study, I’m thinking…not so much.

However, I’m betting this will end badly, one way or another.

Really mean streets

Y’all know how I like to keep up on matters ophidian, wherever in the world they might be or whatever the season. In a pinch, I’ll go with performing crocodiles.

And—as you know—I do not make any of this stuff up.

And it’s my own home town, the great city of Los Angeles that gives me the most recent adventure, because it seems that an albino cobra went on the lam for four days, before it was taken into custody by authorities.

Four days, folks. Four long, hot and anxious days.

(The snake might look something like this.)

It turns out, according to killjoy WaPo, that this particular serpent isn’t so much albino as leucistic (meaning it lacks pigment, but has blue eyes instead of pink). 

However, I don’t believe you’d think that particular hair worth splitting if you came across the cobra in question on your way home from your gang initiation or the medical marijuana dispensary.

Gratitude Monday: spun beauty

Today I’m grateful for art in all its incarnations and artists in all their manifestations. If you are willing to look, you can find extraordinary creativity and beauty in some of the most seemingly unlikely places.

Here’s an example. I first saw it Saturday, and I must have replayed it about five times since. Because: beautiful, delicate, flowery cotton candy!

As I was watching this street vendor spend more than two minutes to create a multi-colored cotton-candy flower for what I imagine is pennies, my heart lightened. Here’s a guy who suits up every day to go stand for hours in a not-very-salubrious-looking location, putting his all into creating stunning sculptures out of spun sugar.

In my world of strip malls, software engineer ninjas and apartment complexes with hundreds of units, this cotton-candy artist is a true innovator; every single one of his creations is unique. And lovely.

And that just makes me smile.

Even more so because his work is so ephemeral. None of them is going to make it intact five meters from his stand. They’re all going to be devoured. Yet he keeps on making them.

Thanks for that, cotton-candy dude. Thanks.

Painting the town red

Utterly désolée that I am not in Breda, the Netherlands this weekend. Because it’s Redhead Days, and it would be just awesome to be surrounded by thousands of my people.

I mean:

But since I can’t be there, I’ll pass on a bit of knowledge that y’all might be interested in regarding the flame-haired set.

I will vouch personally for the data on redheads having pain receptor issues. I first heard about this phenomenon from an anesthesiologist during a pre-surgical consultation. She took down all the usual information, then commented, “I’ll administer an extra amount, given that you’re a redhead.” She explained that this had been known anecdotally to her colleagues for some time, but that studies were finally confirming it.

The next time I went under the knife, during the pre-surgical anesthesiologist consult, I merely pointed at my hair. Since he was also a ginger, he just nodded and made a notation on his clipboard. (This is how long ago this was: no iPad in use.)

But this information about redheads and anesthesia would explain why, when I had outpatient surgery using a local back in my college days, I kept kind of jumping around the table. Because the pain was still getting through. It was unnerving the surgeon until the anesthesiologist finally expanded the target area.

(In my case, they also have to mix in an anti-nausea prophylaxis, because the worst thing for me is the post-anesthesia puking. But that's just me.)

Sorry I can’t be in Breda today, my brothers and sisters. Perhaps next year.