1) Another Larry King quote, another Random Thoughts post. This particular Larry utterance comes from an interview he did with Harper's Bazaar, focusing on The Great Man's fashion sense. Because after all, when I think of all things cool and stylish, I think of Larry King.
2) I live in Iowa, so there's no way to avoid it: Floods. The rain has seemed almost endless since the spring, and the ground has been saturated the whole time. At its most benign, water is seeping into people's basements because where else can it go? The ground can't hold anymore.
At its most malignant, of course, water leaps the banks of rivers, cascading down streets, wiping out homes and businesses, short-circuiting power grids and poisoning water supplies. These are replays of actions that happened all over the midwest only two years ago, and which devastated most of Iowa fifteen years before that.
Flooding happens, of course, but not generally on this scale, not this often. The floods of '93 were a supposedly once-in-a-lifetime happening, but it seems the unthinkable is becoming routine. And humans will react as they always do, by gritting their teeth, soldiering on and refusing to admit that nature is in charge.
3) Any TV news show that includes regular comments from a right-wing pundit--which is to say, any TV news show--will feature the right-winger saying something along the lines of, "Oh, it's so offensive that people think Tea Partiers are a bunch of racists. That's offensive! That's reverse racism!"
At which point, the host of Generic News Show will back off, perhaps feebly suggesting that there may be some people sympathetic to the Tea Party cause who are perhaps a bit less than racially sensitive, and the right-winger will say something like, "What are you, the NAACP?" and everyone will laugh.
Because, yes, darn it, the Tea Party types are totally NOT racist. Oh, sure, they'll refer to Obama as the "coon-mander in chief" and yeah, they might email each other hilarious doctored photos of the president eating watermelon or rolling dice, and they might glower at the number of interracial couples around them and mutter, "Time was, you could lynch a boy for doing that to a white woman"--but they're not racist!
And in case you're wondering, yes, I've encountered all these things in person.
4) Geez, this has been a pretty depressing post so far. So let's talk about something cheerful and upbeat. Specifically--Beagles! More to the point, let's talk about Bella, who consistently brightens my day with the near-maniacal exuberance she brings to something as simple as jumping up on a chair. Between her insane leaping, desire for attention and endless energy--not to mention the fact that her antics often reduce me to helpless laughter--it's like living with a furry, four-legged Jerry Lewis. (Which presumably casts me in the Dean Martin role. I'd better learn how to sing.)
So I was walking Bella the other morning, and she caught a scent of something or other, as she often does, but her reaction to this particular odor was unusually intense--it caused her to rear up on her hind legs. And then--she just started trotting along on her hind legs, as if it was the most natural thing in the world! She stopped, eventually, turned and and looked at me, as if seeking approval. Or more like, she was saying, "See? Here's another cute thing I can do! Is there no limit to how adorable I can be? Could you possibly love me any more?"
And no, of course, I couldn't. I couldn't imagine how it would be possible to love anyone or anything more than I love Bella.
5) But then there's poor Delmar. He nuzzles Bella occasionally, and tries to show some sort of affection for her, but he just can't. If I had any other cat in the world, it would probably have bonded with Bella by now, and they'd curl up together in the recliner, or at least peaceably co-exist, each in their own little world.
But any other cat wouldn't be Del, my furry little malcontent, a black-and-white bundle of neuroses. I couldn't love him any more than I do, either, but he'd never believe me if I told him that.
6) This post was originally going to be all about the new CGI/live-action Bugs Bunny film that the soulless suits at Warner Bros. intend to put into production. But when I tried to actually say something about it, I found myself speechless. Some ideas are so transparently awful, they can't even be properly mocked.
