Happy Thanksgiving!

I used to run this comic every year at Thanksgiving... and I still get hits from all the occasions I've posted it in the past. So I decided to take it out of mothballs for the new vegetarians having their very first meatless Thanksgiving.

Welcome!

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Leave the turkey alone! He/she is innocent and didn't do anything to YOU!

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See yall in a few days, when I get back from wonderful Hotlanta.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I have a big announcement coming on the radio show Saturday, so stay tuned! I have been FAR too excited to blog about it, and also don't wanna spoil the surprise. I will be announcing it here on Saturday, after the show.

By the way, it is also our 25th wedding anniversary! We went to Atlanta and back, and have been taking it easy this week. It's been a very nice holiday for us both.

I made him a Deadhead and he made me a fangirl. Good trade!

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I also transformed my spouse into a confirmed cat-person... or maybe he always was one, just waiting to emerge? I just introduced the cats, and the rest happened naturally.

Time for Simon's Cat! In attempting to find boxes to ship Christmas presents, I experienced the following, as most cat-owners have:



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And I really love this one. My younger cat has perfectly imitated all the habits of my older cat:



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Hope your holiday is good too!

Happy Thanksgiving!

LEAVE THE TURKEY ALONE! He/she is innocent and didn't do anything to YOU!

Below, behold my popular, yearly Thanksgiving cartoon. (I started getting hits on it on SUNDAY!) Have a great holiday!

Why I hate Newt: It's personal

At left: January 2000 cover of Atlanta Magazine, courtesy of Rebecca Burns and her great memory.




Going to suburban Atlanta for the holiday, later in the week. Now that Newtie is back in the news, I will be hearing all about him from my father-in-law (again), who considers him the most dishonest of the most dishonest politicians. I remember the 90s as one long anti-Newt screed, over various Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. It was a nice vacation for my nerves when Newt retired from government to take $1.5 million from Freddie Mac, leaving the good citizens of Georgia alone. (Although lots of 90s survivors have never trusted him, for a variety of reasons.)

And now he's back and noisily running for President, with his famous cost-cutting measures, such as staying in the SC Governor's mansion on my dime. And he instructs us dirty Occupiers to take a bath and get a job! This has brought out some nasty tweets in response:

You know #Newt, some in #OWS may not bathe as often as you, but I'd bet most of them wouldn't divorce their spouses who are dying of cancer.

Direct hit!

Yes, its hard to swallow self-righteous moralism from serial monogamists who owe Tiffany's a half million dollars, and expect to be taken seriously. But there are Newt signs all over my neighborhood and across from St Mary Magdalene in Simpsonville, so I guess he is making important political inroads in the Palmetto State.

He is an awful, resentful, arrogant, duplicitous, dishonest man. And not just in his personal life, but in every single thing he does and every single thing he touches.

This tells us so much about the Republican Party, that this common shyster is what they are left with.

And besides that, he is going to ruin ANOTHER Thanksgiving for me as I listen to a catalog of his sins. Dyspepsia awaits, and plenty of it.

(burp)

Have a cruelty-free Thanksgiving!

Have a great Thanksgiving everyone... and as I do every year, I hereby counsel you all to LEAVE THE INNOCENT TURKEY ALONE! He or she did not do anything to you!

(I guess the new cool thing is actually going out and killing your own turkey, like you are on Survivor or something?)

See you all in a couple of days... eat lots of mashed potatoes! :)

Leave the turkey alone!

This comic is one of many that circulate among vegetarians (in email, blogs and listservs) every year at Thanksgiving. I do not have a credit for it, but will guess that it's by Gary Larson or one of his legion of imitators. (Larson was often notably animal-centric in his comics, praised by no less than Jane Goodall.)

If you know for sure who the author/artist is, please leave a note in the comments!

And I repeat, LEAVE THE TURKEY ALONE!

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Taking a short blog break for the holiday. It is also me and Mr Daisy's anniversary--we have been married 22 years! (boggle) Some of my readers are younger than my marriage!

At this point, we finish each other's sentences, just like the old married people you've seen on TV.

Have a great holiday, have a good time, party hardy, and let a turkey live!

((kisses))

Thanksgiving Dead Air: Alice's Restaurant

What kind of hippie am I, that I didn't post this last year?

Happy Thanksgiving, and if you have 20 minutes, have a listen. (Remember, it's all true!) I apologize for Arlo's rather impersonal use of the word "faggots"--which might be why I didn't use it last year. This was recorded in 1967, two years before Stonewall. In the newer version, Arlo quit saying it. I am offering the original here, for historical accuracy.

See you when I get back from Atlanta, where I am taking myself and my clunky leg cast. It's healing VERY slowly, which is undoubtedly due to the fact that it wasn't properly set for 5 days. Argh. But I know if I don't go, I'll feel worse than if I do!

PS: LEAVE THE TURKEYS ALONE, they are innocent and didn't do anything to you!

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Alice's Restaurant, part 1 - Arlo Guthrie



Alice's Restaurant, part 2

Playing with my new camera...

My cat is not impressed with my new toy, and wonders why I am harassing him.




















Your humble narrator, on Thanksgiving Day.


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Listening to: Jimi Hendrix Experience - Are You Experienced?
via FoxyTunes

Georgia on my Mind

After 20 years of marriage, me and Mr. Daisy have certain rules worked out. One of these rules: whoever drives gets to choose the music. That's seems fair enough.

And since I refuse to drive in nightmarish metro-areas such as Atlanta, Houston, Washington DC, etc. this means that I am subjected to continuous, ear-bleeding rounds of Stiff Little Fingers, Dinosaur Jr, Social Distortion, The Clash, etc. (What? Did you say something?) Mr. Daisy likes to punctuate blasts of The Clash with Elijah Wood's addled statement in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, as he memorably jumped up and down on the bed while smoking dope with Kirsten Dunst: The Clash, the only band that mattered! They called themselves that for a reason!

I find Atlanta traffic terrifying. My driving-panic-threshold seems to be cities the size of Austin, Columbus, Cleveland, Baton Rouge, St Augustine, where I can drive fairly decently. Atlanta? Not on your life. Or mine!

And so, I invariably arrive half-deafened at my in-laws. I hope they don't take this personally and think I am not listening.

This year, I handed my mother-in-law a fancy gourmet cinnamon crumb cake, and she deadpanned, "I hope you brought your own water. Don't need CAKE, need WATER."

Indeed, we had just passed Lake Hartwell, which is usually quite majestic, blue and beautiful in the sun. (From the air, it looks like a large and lovely blue flower imprinted on the earth.) Not today. The drought is so severe, an ugly brown island was poking up out of the lake, that I didn't even know was there. The coast of the lake is lined in dried reddish Georgia clay. What's happened to the water? What the hell is going on? Georgia politicians are threatening to take water from South Carolina, which as you might imagine, is not going over so well around here.

The real estate pimps at Lake Hartwell, eager to contain the damage, are assuring everyone everything is A-OK, and arranging the Lake webcams (see left) to minimize any appearance of drought. Everything is fine! Getcher lakefront property here! Everything IS FINE FINE FINE.

Obviously not. The Army Corps of Engineers informs us that yes, lake levels are very low:

Extreme drought conditions have persisted across much of Georgia with moderate to severe drought conditions over most of the Savannah Basin. Over the past 30 days, precipitation has averaged less than 30% of normal for this time of year in the Upper Savannah Basin. As a result, the soil is very dry which reduces the amount of runoff and inflow from tributaries after rain events. Additionally, low soil moisture reduces the amount of water available for evapotranspiration that causes cloud formation for afternoon thunderstorms this time of year. Current long term forecasts from the National Weather Service do not indicate a change in the current dry pattern over the next 90 days.

The updated Savannah District Drought Contingency Plan (DCP) took effect on September 30th, 2006. The DCP includes the operational rules for the reservoirs as drought conditions develop. This plan was developed with extensive stakeholder input and seeks to balance the needs for water resources during times of shortages.

Drought Level 1 was triggered at the end of June 2007 resulting in a flow reduction to a maximum weekly average release of 4200cfs at Thurmond Dam. Drought Level 2 was triggered in mid-August 2007 resulting in a flow reduction to a maximum weekly average release of 4000cfs at Thurmond Dam. Additionally, as of Tuesday, October 23, 2007, after gaining agreement from other federal and state stakeholder agencies, the minimum daily discharge from Lake Thurmond has been temporarily reduced from 3800 to back to 3600 cubic feet per second. These flow reductions at Thurmond cause flow reductions at Hartwell that are necessary to keep the pools near balance. The Southeastern Power Administration (SEPA) is purchasing replacement energy from other sources to cover the reduced hydropower generation from the DCP implementation.

And in Atlanta, emergency measures have been utilized for some time now, hence, my mother-in-law's joke:

An unprecedented drought stretching across the southeastern United States has forced some of the region's largest cities to declare water emergencies.

The situation has become so serious that officials in Atlanta, where rainfall totals are more than 16 inches below normal, said they could run out of drinking water in a matter of weeks.

"Without any intervention, we are likely to run out of water in three months," said Carol Couch, the director of the Environmental Protection Division in Georgia.

The drought has been sucking the city and its water sources dry.

"We have actually classified it as an exceptional drought," said David Stooksbury, a climatologist at Georgia State. "Basically [it is] the type of drought that we expect to see about once in 100 years."

Most of Atlanta's water supply comes from two lakes. Lake Lanier is the main source, but the drought has affected it.

The city's second source for water is Lake Allatoona, which should be about 16 feet higher than it currently is and continues losing a foot a week. Docks used for boats sit high and dry, hundreds of feet from the water's edge.

At the heart of the drought drama is the question of how state and federal officials ration the shrinking water supply.

Georgia officials have threatened legal action if the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers does not drastically cut the amount of water it releases from state lakes for agricultural and industrial use. Much of that released water ends up in Florida and Alabama, where officials are likely to oppose any additional decrease in the flow of water. Florida officials say low water levels already threaten the survival of endangered river mussels.

The corps already came under fire when it accidentally released 22 billion extra gallons of water from Lake Lanier last June, just as the region was sinking into a deep drought.

The dry weather has caused the state governors in the region to request that residents cut back on their water usage.

In the Atlanta area, while the conservation measures inside the home are still voluntary, the entire state is under a mandatory outdoor watering ban.

Read the rest of the story, from ABC news. The situation is so dire, water thefts have begun.

And so, the horrible consequences of global warming continue to manifest. And all while various Republicans and conservative wackos refuse to believe global warming is real.

How about those global-warming-skeptics start bringing THEIR own water?

Frequent updates: Atlanta Water Shortage

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Listening to: Lou Reed - Berlin
via FoxyTunes

Yearly Thanksgiving Harangue

You knew it was coming, dincha? ;)

None of my friends and family IRL escape this, and dear reader, neither will you.

Excerpted from Turkeys: Factory-Farmed Torture on the Holiday Table:

More than 40 million turkeys are killed each year at Thanksgiving, more than 20 million are slaughtered at Christmas, and another 19 million die for Easter dinners. Before ending up as holiday centerpieces, these gentle birds spend five to six months on factory farms where thousands of them are packed into dark sheds with no more than 3.5 square feet of space per bird. To keep the overcrowded birds from scratching and pecking each other to death, workers cut off portions of the birds’ toes and upper beaks with hot blades and de-snood the males (the snood is the flap of skin that runs from the beak to the chest). No pain relievers are used during any of these procedures.

Genetic manipulation and antibiotics enable farmers to produce heavily muscled birds who can weigh 35 pounds in as little as five months, and “their internal organs are noticeably crammed together in the little bit of space remaining for the body cavity,” according to The Washington Post. An industry magazine said, “[T]urkey breeders have created birds with huge, unnatural, outsized breasts, since white breast meat is where the money is.” Another turkey breeder complained that birds “are bred to grow fast just to live to 16 weeks [and then] they die,” usually from organ failure, and some suffer from broken legs because their bones are not able to support their weight. A 12-year study of turkey farmers in Iowa (one of the nation’s top turkey-producing states) revealed that leg problems and aneurysms were among the top three health problems in turkey flocks. Factory-farmed turkeys are so large that they cannot even perform normal reproductive behaviors, so all turkeys raised for food are the products of artificial insemination.

Millions of turkeys don’t even make it past the first few weeks before succumbing to “starve-out,” a stress-induced condition that causes young birds to simply stop eating. Catching and transportation are particularly stressful processes for birds, and yet they are repeatedly moved during their short lives—from hatchery to the brooding area to the growing area and finally to the slaughterhouse.

At the slaughterhouse, turkeys are hung upside-down by their weak and twisted legs before their heads are dragged through an electrified “stunning tank,” which immobilizes them but does not kill them. Many birds dodge the tank and, therefore, are fully conscious when their throats are slit. If the knife fails to properly slit the birds’ throats, they are scalded alive in the tank of hot water used for feather removal.

Okay, I'm done.

Consider a nice tofurky, or some mashed potatoes?

More:
Butterball Cruelty
United Poultry Concerns
Animals Voice
Vegan Outreach
Go Veg.com

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Listening to: Dead Kennedys - Holiday in Cambodia
via FoxyTunes