Blog for Choice Day - An Important Anniversary

Today is the 35th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, and after all these years we are still not assured of retaining control of our reproductive rights.

Several of the current presidential candidates would like to reverse that decision, and throw away what so many have worked so long to accomplish, simply because of their own religious beliefs.

We've grown complacent, evidently believing that common sense and justice will prevail.

We should know better.

So-called pro-life advocates are working overtime to get this ruling overturned, and they are not complacent. They are driven tirelessly by their personal belief that everyone must embrace their personal belief.

They don't understand that few people are PRO-abortion. Abortion is ugly, painful, unimaginable. But is it better to insist that a 14 year old girl have her baby, put her health at risk, her education at risk? Sure she can give it up for adoption. But ask yourself: how easy would it be to carry a pregnancy to term -- nine months of growing a living being inside you -- go through the pain of childbirth, and then hand that living being over to complete strangers?

Obviously it doesn't work, or we wouldn't be informed so often on the nightly news that yet another infant has been found in a dumpster. Or worse.

Today is Blog for Choice day, a way for us to make a unified statement that we do not want to return to the dark days of back-alley abortions and unwanted children. A unified statement that abortion is a personal decision.

Roe vs. Wade ensures our right to privacy regarding our bodies. Those who want to invade that privacy should be ashamed.

Maybe I should stop making a big deal about turning 50

EVERYbody Dance Now

This video pleases me beyond description. How come Eugene doesn't have cool broadcasts like this?



But wait, there's more!

How cold is it?

A friend of mine just used the expression "colder than a witch's tittie" and was wondering where that saying came from. Which reminded me of my favorite descriptive phrase regarding cold that's a compilation of a several such sayings:

• Colder than a witch's tit.
• Colder than a ditch digger's ass.
• Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.

"It's colder than a witch digger's brass monkey."

Even though it was about 25-30 years ago, I'm still using that one after hearing it on Mork and Mindy. For the infants among you, that was an ancient sitcom starring Robin Williams as the charming alien Mork. Classic stuff there. Click on the link if you want to see a really lame fan site.

OK, first blog of 2008. At least it's not a crocodile with a hand in its mouth.

Can I give you a hand?

If I hadn't stolen this from a reliable site and Reuters wasn't in the credits, I would've bet money this was a Photoshop job. Here's what the caption said:

"A crocodile at a zoo in the southern Taiwan city of Kaohsiung holds the forearm of a zoo veterinarian in between its teeth, April 11, 2007. The crocodile bit off the arm of the zoo veterinarian treating it, an official reported.
REUTERS/Frank Lin (TAIWAN)"

UPDATE: Here's a link to the story on Fox News. I HATE Fox News, but in this case they have the best link to more photos that are totally gruesome. And, therefore, fascinating. Enjoy!

I love cats, but...

Dang, does this even qualify as a cat?

Please watch this

Overall, I've fallen out of love with Oprah. She's at times a caricature of herself, and sometimes her show leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth.

Today was not one of those days.

Here in Eugene, her daily show repeats at 8:00 p.m. Tonight there wasn't much else on, so I tuned in. The first segment was on a lovely young woman and her battle with cancer (which she is winning without chemo). This caught my attention, so I started watching. Very interesting.

Then they brought out Randy Pausch, a professor of computer science at Carnegie-Mellon. He reprised part of his final lecture at C-M, which is an actual final lecture since he is dying of pancreatic cancer. I was moved to tears, and I don't cry that easily. They weren't maudlin, sad tears, but tears of admiration and...I don't know, maybe you could call it joy. His talk is moving and inspirational, and I urge you to watch at least this segment of Oprah's show. Click on the link about halfway down the page to start the video.

Evidently his full lecture is almost two hours, and is available here. I plan on watching this as well.

Seriously, watch this. You won't regret it.