Giving Thanks for … Chard

And why not? It’s the last ragged remnant of my harvest. The tomatoes visible behind the chard are actually riddled with fungus. They wouldn’t taste like summer anymore, anyway. After taking months to recover from our pair of hungry bunnies, the chard is still bitterly delicious. It apparently enjoys a light flirtation with frost. I [...]

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The Tyranny of Youth – Now for Men, Too!

Since I’ve been home for the holidays, I’ve availed myself of my mom’s People magazine collection. Actually, she doesn’t buy People very often. She mostly likes the year-end roundups – and, as I noticed this week, the “World’s Hottest Men” issue.
I guess I’m my mother’s daughter, because I like hot men, too. But darn it [...]

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The New Breast Cancer Guidelines: Debunking Some Myths

From the better-late-than-never department: I’ve been getting questions in real life about how I view the new mammogram guidelines, so I might as well weigh in on them here, too.
The new guidelines are only the culmination of years of research that has demolished the belief that routine mammograms for women in their forties will save [...]

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California Dreamin’

Posting may be irregular over the next couple of weeks. I’m visiting family in California, and WordPress mixes with dial-up like cats mix with dogs. They’re not wholly incompatible; there’s just a lot of hissing involved.
I’ll try to post when I get a chance, but in the meantime, know that I’m having fun reconnecting with [...]

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Wigged Out Caturday

From the annals of things you never imagined you needed: a wig for your cat.

This lovely model – a pink version of the wig Flip Wilson wore as his female alter-ego, Geraldine – is unfortunately sold out. And what a pity! To quote the Kitty Wigs! website: “Pink makes your kitty feel elegant, modern and quintessentially [...]

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Yet Another Vice That’s Good for You: Chocolate Milk!

Yippee! I am always tickled to hear that yet another ostensibly bad-for-you food has been Officially Declared Healthy. Today, it’s chocolate milk, according to the New York Times.
Move over, red wine. Make room for chocolate milk. A new study suggests that regular consumption of skim milk with flavonoid-rich cocoa may reduce inflammation, potentially slowing or [...]

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Carrie Prejean’s Next Career: Sex Educator?

So now that a sex tape – or eight of ‘em – have torpedoed Carrie Prejean’s career as the pretty face of the anti-marriage equality movement, I have a suggestion for what she might do next.
What if Prejean were to become the pretty face – no, the pretty Christian face! – of a pro-masturbation campaign? [...]

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A Happy Lego Birthday

We celebrated the Bear’s tenth birthday today (only six days late) with a few of his friends and lots of Legos. The cake was a giant yellow Lego surrounded by Duplo people.

It’s made from a 9 x 13 rectangular sheet cake with eight cupcakes. (Since two mixes are required for this, you end up with [...]

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Rape Myths on Trial

This week, the local rape trial that I wrote about here and here reached its end. The defendant was found not guilty. Though I wasn’t in the courtroom, the media reports on the trial make me seriously wonder if justice was served. The defense relied heavily on rape myths. Apparently the jury was convinced. For [...]

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How Many Fingers Add up to a Recall?

My Tiger’s fingers, age three.
It’s been a few years since my kids fit into a stroller, but I still reacted viscerally at the news that Maclaren is recalling about a million strollers due to a faulty hinge. Since 1999, twelve children have had a fingertip amputated due to this design flaw. (Follow that link if [...]

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Ten and Twenty Years Ago: The Confluence of Personal and Public History

Twenty years ago today, the Berlin Wall was breached. Günter Schabowski, an East German Politburo member, announced that East Germans were free to travel. Now an old man, Schabowski claimed on the BBC this morning that he didn’t make a basic mistake, that he just jumped the gun by a few hours, but the record [...]

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Bearing Babies, Bearing Risk – or, How the Stupid Stupak Amendment Hurts Women’s Health

A couple of months ago, I wasted a half-hour of my life listening in on a town hall conference call with my congresscritter, Charlie Wilson. Amid all of his reassurances to reactionary constituents that he wouldn’t sign off on death panels, he kept repeating: “I am a Blue Dog Democrat. I am pro-life.” This weekend, he [...]

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Caturday: Feline Swine Flu Edition

From ICHC?
Via Effect Measure, I learned that it’s possible for cats to catch swine flu from humans – something scientists didn’t know, either, until just this week. Tara Parker-Pope wrote in the New York Times about a 13-year-old cat in Ames, Iowa, who caught the virus:
The cat, a 16-pound orange tabby, began acting lethargic and [...]

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The Risks of Outsourcing Immunity to the Private Sector

On the phone, during a short break from comforting her daughter who was suffering from swine flu, my sister tells me: “I am so angry at our government!” Now, this is not a woman who routinely turns to the government for help. She votes Republican, largely on fiscal grounds. But my sis has been trying [...]

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The Wasilla Literary Renaissance

Apparently it’s poetry week here at Kittywampus. Following up on Rumsfeldian penis-spam poetry, we’ve now got the next literary contender from Wasilla. If you didn’t hear William Shatner’s dramatic reading of Sarh Palin’s tweets, you’ve got some catching up to do.
All caught up? Then you’re ready for Shatner performing Levi Johnston’s twitterpoems – if indeed [...]

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Do We Have Swine Flu? Or Do We Just “Have Swine”?

German has this wacky way of expressing good luck: “Schwein haben,” or having swine/pig. It’s clashing with the nomenclature of swine flu, which ain’t such great luck if you get it.
My sister tells me my niece is coming along well – she’s stopped puking, at least – but 19 out of 24 kids were absent [...]

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Is Rumsfeld Writing Vi*gra Spam?

The one semi-redeeming quality in Donald Rumsfeld was his poetic streak. Who can forget this classic?
The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don’t know
We don’t know.
(From [...]

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Local Election Endorsement: Chris Fahl for City Council!

I don’t typically endorse candidates here, because I like to be an equal-opportunity critic, and because honestly Kittywampus is hardly the New York Times or even the Athens News. However, we’ve got a contested election in my ward, and a friend of mine is ably defending her seat on city council. For once, I’ve got [...]

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Swine Flu Hits Home

No, I’m not sick, nor are my kids – and my husband got the swine flu shot this morning, as one of those “lucky” people who are likely more vulnerable than average. But as I was stirring the dinner pots this evening, my sister called to tell me that her daughter (my six-year-old niece) has [...]

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Proud of My Students

One of my former students, who’s now graduated and out in the world, wrote a letter to the campus paper that just made me so proud of her. A rape case that I wrote about last spring was first tried in the local media, and now the defendant’s lawyers are pulling the same shenanigans in [...]

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