A serious cat
Sigh. Arm warmers and knee warmers yesterday, everything warmers today. And I haven’t even been outside yet.
Herself and I had planned to catch this evening’s opening of the Coen brothers’ latest, “Inside Llewyn Davis,” but you know what they say about the best-laid plans.
The brothers chatted with Terry Gross on “Fresh Air” the other day, and Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein (commander, 1st Feline Home Defense Force) was appalled to hear them libeling cats so freely.
Discussing the honor and privilege of persuading a cat to participate in their latest film, Ethan spake thusly:
“In ‘True Grit’ we had a vulture, a trained vulture … that was a pain and that was even — by vulture standards — probably a stupid vulture, and that was frustrating. But I would take a vulture over a cat. The cat was just horrible.”
As a consequence, the Turk’ has declared war on the Coen brothers, and we are forbidden to see the film.
It’s censorship, true, but what are we to do? This is war.
Sunrise
Can you hear us NOW?
Good news for those of us who don’t like Uncle Sammy listening to our phone calls just, ’cause, like, you know, freedom an’ shit — a federal district judge ruled Monday that the National Security Agency’s perma-tap is likely an “almost Orwellian” violation of the U.S. Constitution.
According to The New York Times, Judge Richard J. Leon stayed his injunction “in light of the significant national security interests at stake in this case and the novelty of the constitutional issues,” giving the gummint time to appeal, which could take six months or more.
But the judge said as part of a 68-page ruling that the gummint had failed to cite “a single instance in which analysis of the N.S.A.’s bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent attack, or otherwise aided the government in achieving any objective that was time-sensitive.”
MoJo’s Kevin Drum notes that “district court judges make lots of rulings that never go anywhere, and this is mostly likely one of them.” But he likes that a judge wants this bullshit to stop, and so do I.
A chile reception
Weird dreams this morning. I was working for a newspaper (!) again, so I guess it qualifies as a nightmare.
So I walk into the newsroom, late as usual, and a receptionist type hands me a note with a short clip attached, whispering in dire tones about some class of tragic typo.
I reply, “D’you have any idea how many people we have reading copy these days? I tried to get the city desk to read one fucking thing yesterday, but nooooooo. …”
Then, since John McCain is sitting in front of this person’s desk for some reason, perhaps awaiting an audience with the publisher, I whip a Three Stooges routine on him, poking him in the chest with one finger and then, when he glances down, flicking his nose.
Moving on, I notice that nobody is at their desks. They’re all in the big conference room, and the mood is not evocative of a holiday party.
“Uh oh,” I think to myself. And then I wake up.
I think maybe I overdid the red chile last night.
