Measi's Musings

Archive for May, 2007

Gets summed up here:

Tonight’s plan:

- Pet cats (all… six of them)
- Stitch
- Watch Deadliest Catch
- Watch something with Tennant (above) in it. Hell, maybe I’ll watch Gridlock (from which episodes behind-the-scenes pics this photo came).

*sigh*

Hoodsie
Originally uploaded by measi.

Meet Hoodsie – the newest addition to the insane cat posse.

There are three other photos of him at my Flickr site. He wasn’t too thrilled with my interruption of his evening nap with the camera.

But I did want to get first pictures of what he looks like – we’re adding yet another cat fur color to the menagerie – and also to show off the amazing feet that just fascinate me every time I look at him.

See – with the exception of Elly, who has little back dew claws that make her a very rare form of polydactyl cat (usually the back paws are only affected if the front paws are), I’ve never had a multi-toed cat. Even Elly’s extra toes aren’t really visible unless you look closely – her dew claws are tiny. They’re full toes – complete with a paw pad and all, but they don’t touch the ground, and they’re so small that they blend in with the rest of her fur.

And then Hoodsie comes along, who is insanely polydactyl. The boy has lots and lots of toes. Two extra on every foot. Three extra on one back foot. True Hemingway Cat here (and I absolutely adore that term… very literary and distinguished).

In any case, he’s doing fine. He was extremely vocal tonight about being in the sunroom (he’s tired of it and wants to explore), but we took turns petting him. He was very appreciative of his evening can of food, and now seems to have settled down for another nap.

All is well. And we’re still crazy. But yeah, I know we did the right thing.

ETA: Kim pointed out that I hadn’t exactly mentioned how we named Hoodsie. (I forget this… because we’ve explained it in person to so many people)…

Hoodsie is named because he comes from the neighborhood (aka ‘hood), and the name just kinda stuck. He also is a chunky cat, suggesting that he’s eating too many Hoodsie Pops and Hoodsie Cups. (Hood is a local dairy brand here in New England, and “Hoodsie” is the common name for any ice cream cups served with a wooden stick).

Ok… jumping on a bandwagon… feel free to answer in my comments and make it the longest comment string ever.

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Found via the rabbit hole of blog links today… and while I don’t agree with everything, it’s definitely an interesting, thought-provoking read.

Let’s Watch A Girl Get Beaten To Death.
via Whedonesque

This is not my blog, but I don’t have a blog, or a space, and I’d like to be heard for a bit.

Last month seventeen year old Dua Khalil was pulled into a crowd of young men, some of them (the instigators) family, who then kicked and stoned her to death. This is an example of the breath-taking oxymoron “honor killing”, in which a family member (almost always female) is murdered for some religious or ethical transgression. Dua Khalil, who was of the Yazidi faith, had been seen in the company of a Sunni Muslim, and possibly suspected of having married him or converted. That she was torturously murdered for this is not, in fact, a particularly uncommon story. But now you can watch the action up close on CNN. Because as the girl was on the ground trying to get up, her face nothing but red, the few in the group of more than twenty men who were not busy kicking her and hurling stones at her were filming the event with their camera-phones.

There were security officers standing outside the area doing nothing, but the footage of the murder was taken – by more than one phone – from the front row. Which means whoever shot it did so not to record the horror of the event, but to commemorate it. To share it. Because it was cool.

I could start a rant about the level to which we have become desensitized to violence, about the evils of the voyeuristic digital world in which everything is shown and everything is game, but honestly, it’s been said. And I certainly have no jingoistic cultural agenda. I like to think that in America this would be considered unbearably appalling, that Kitty Genovese is still remembered, that we are more evolved. But coincidentally, right before I stumbled on this vid I watched the trailer for “Captivity”.

A few of you may know that I took public exception to the billboard campaign for this film, which showed a concise narrative of the kidnapping, torture and murder of a sexy young woman. I wanted to see if the film was perhaps more substantial (especially given the fact that it was directed by “The Killing Fields” Roland Joffe) than the exploitive ad campaign had painted it. The trailer resembles nothing so much as the CNN story on Dua Khalil. Pretty much all you learn is that Elisha Cuthbert is beautiful, then kidnapped, inventively, repeatedly and horrifically tortured, and that the first thing she screams is “I’m sorry”.

“I’m sorry.”

What is wrong with women?

I mean wrong. Physically. Spiritually. Something unnatural, something destructive, something that needs to be corrected.

How did more than half the people in the world come out incorrectly? I have spent a good part of my life trying to do that math, and I’m no closer to a viable equation. And I have yet to find a culture that doesn’t buy into it. Women’s inferiority – in fact, their malevolence — is as ingrained in American popular culture as it is anywhere they’re sporting burkhas. I find it in movies, I hear it in the jokes of colleagues, I see it plastered on billboards, and not just the ones for horror movies. Women are weak. Women are manipulative. Women are somehow morally unfinished. (Objectification: another tangential rant avoided.) And the logical extension of this line of thinking is that women are, at the very least, expendable.

I try to think how we got here. The theory I developed in college (shared by many I’m sure) is one I have yet to beat: Womb Envy. Biology: women are generally smaller and weaker than men. But they’re also much tougher. Put simply, men are strong enough to overpower a woman and propagate. Women are tough enough to have and nurture children, with or without the aid of a man. Oh, and they’ve also got the equipment to do that, to be part of the life cycle, to create and bond in a way no man ever really will. Somewhere a long time ago a bunch of men got together and said, “If all we do is hunt and gather, let’s make hunting and gathering the awesomest achievement, and let’s make childbirth kinda weak and shameful.” It’s a rather silly simplification, but I believe on a mass, unconscious level, it’s entirely true. How else to explain the fact that cultures who would die to eradicate each other have always agreed on one issue? That every popular religion puts restrictions on women’s behavior that are practically untenable? That the act of being a free, attractive, self-assertive woman is punishable by torture and death? In the case of this upcoming torture-porn, fictional. In the case of Dua Khalil, mundanely, unthinkably real. And both available for your viewing pleasure.

It’s safe to say that I’ve snapped. That something broke, like one of those robots you can conquer with a logical conundrum. All my life I’ve looked at this faulty equation, trying to understand, and I’ve shorted out. I don’t pretend to be a great guy; I know really really well about objectification, trust me. And I’m not for a second going down the “women are saints” route – that just leads to more stone-throwing (and occasional Joan-burning). I just think there is the staggering imbalance in the world that we all just take for granted. If we were all told the sky was evil, or at best a little embarrassing, and we ought not look at it, wouldn’t that tradition eventually fall apart? (I was going to use ‘trees’ as my example, but at the rate we’re getting rid of them I’m pretty sure we really do think they’re evil. See how all rants become one?)

Now those of you who frequent this site are, in my wildly biased opinion, fairly evolved. You may hear nothing new here. You may be way ahead of me. But I can’t contain my despair, for Dua Khalil, for humanity, for the world we’re shaping. Those of you who have followed the link I set up know that it doesn’t bring you to a video of a murder. It brings you to a place of sanity, of people who have never stopped asking the question of what is wrong with this world and have set about trying to change the answer. Because it’s no longer enough to be a decent person. It’s no longer enough to shake our heads and make concerned grimaces at the news. True enlightened activism is the only thing that can save humanity from itself. I’ve always had a bent towards apocalyptic fiction, and I’m beginning to understand why. I look and I see the earth in flames. Her face was nothing but red.

All I ask is this: Do something. Try something. Speaking out, showing up, writing a letter, a check, a strongly worded e-mail. Pick a cause – there are few unworthy ones. And nudge yourself past the brink of tacit support to action. Once a month, once a year, or just once. If you can’t think of what to do, there is this handy link. Even just learning enough about a subject so you can speak against an opponent eloquently makes you an unusual personage. Start with that. Any one of you would have cried out, would have intervened, had you been in that crowd in Bashiqa. Well thanks to digital technology, you’re all in it now.

I have never had any faith in humanity. But I will give us props on this: if we can evolve, invent and theorize our way into the technologically magical, culturally diverse and artistically magnificent race we are and still get people to buy the idiotic idea that half of us are inferior, we’re pretty amazing. Let our next sleight of hand be to make that myth disappear.

The sky isn’t evil. Try looking up.
- Joss Whedon

For the folks who are in the know – Hoodsie is now in our sunroom with a temporary cat quarantine setup (bowls, litterbox, bed, etc.)

After finding one of the neighborhood cats hit and dumped on the road this week, we finally caved in. I mean… we’ve been feeding him for what? Four months now? Plus we’ve named him.

It really was a matter of time.

Took him to the vet this morning (we love our vet that’s open 7 days a week). Feline leukemia and FIV negative. He has fleas, oddly no ear mites, but a myriad of scratch scabs all over him from fights and who knows what else. He needs a serious bath. But otherwise, he’s healthy – no respiratory issues. Heart sounds fine. No apparent issues to the touch with his innards. They gave him the first round of rabies and distemper vaccines. Because he’s an adult, they think they might be able to give him the boosters sooner than the usual waiting period.

Neutering appointment is Friday.

We’ll be keeping him in the sunroom quarantined for probably about a month – mostly to control fleas. (although all of the cats will go on meds for about 6 months once he’s released into general house population). The room has been cleared of couches and anything we can’t physically wash. We continue to celebrate the fact that we have hardwood floors.

*sigh*

We’re insane. Completely, utterly insane.

Our plans to go to the drive-in were quickly squashed by the current weather. While I wouldn’t mind going to see a movie under warm, rainy skies, I don’t care to go and freeze my ass off in low 40′s damp. Bleh. So change of plans – we’ll go to see a movie in Boston tonight along with some friends. The plan is to go see Shrek 3, which was the original drive-in plan, too.

Hopefully we can go to see Pirates at the drive-in next weekend, along with the masses. I imagine it will be crowded as hell.

Based on the weather, the Scottish highland festival is going to feel quite… Scottish. It’s supposed to be pretty cool and rainy through early afternoon tomorrow.

Then there’s a new Doctor Who episode on BBC One tomorrow night, which I’ll probably watch several times before I finally go to sleep.

I have a fanfic to draft up for a ficathon I joined a couple weeks ago. Deadline for the story is July 1st. I have my three prompts to write from. One has me a bit stumped (mostly because I don’t want to fall into cliches with Doctor Who fandom that surround the episode particularly mentioned), but as long as I write to fulfill at least one prompt, I’m in good shape. And I’m completely confident with two of them – so I’ll start there. Minimum word count is 1,000 words. Not. A. Problem. I may have half of that longhand already, and I’m still in the first scene.

In any case, my goal is to get the draft written by the end of Memorial Day weekend so I can shunt it off to my betas (aka fanfic editors), giving me plenty of time to fine tune it with my betas before the deadline.

Other than that, I have some organizing to do this weekend, some little wedding contact stuff to finish, some big wedding research stuff to do, and a lot of stitching.

All in all, a big weekend.