Category: general

From MSNBC:

The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that local governments may seize people’s homes and businesses – even against their will – for private economic development.

It was a decision fraught with huge implications for a country with many areas, particularly the rapidly growing urban and suburban areas, facing countervailing pressures of development and property ownership rights.

As a result, cities now have wide power to bulldoze residences for projects such as shopping malls and hotel complexes in order to generate tax revenue.

Basically, the court said that it wasn’t up to them to make the decision–that it was up to local governments. But it was a close vote.

I can see how it is problematic to let the federal government mandate how local properties are used, and I am of course a staunch supporter of the rights of local governments. I firmly believe that communities should be able to look out for their own needs as they see fit; blanket rulings by a federal body can be irrelevant or can hinder a community with its own unique needs. However, it seems to me that people’s homes should be something sacred–that people should at least feel secure in their living arrangements. It just feels wrong that now a local government can decide to kick people out of their houses in order to put up a mall.

According to the article, Kentucky, along with South Carolina and six other states, has laws against “eminent domain when the economic purpose is not to eliminate blight”. Georgia hasn’t been definitive on the issue yet.

From Hiroshima bomber expresses hope for a nuke-free world:

“I felt, the bomb was successful, the mission was successful, and the entire Manhattan Project was successful,” he said. “And so we were going to end the war or significantly shorten the war. And that’s what we were trying to do.”

Kirk said that the feeling he had at that time hasn’t changed in the 60 years since. He also answered a question many Japanese people have in mind; was it necessary to drop the bomb?

“Well, my personal feeling was that Japan was a beaten nation before we ever dropped the atomic bomb. Eighty-five percent of the industrial capacity of Japan was ruined before we ever dropped the bomb,” he said. “A rational, knowledgeable people would have ended the war a long time before we ever dropped the bombs … They wanted to fight the last big battle on the beaches.”

Kirk then said that more people would have lost their lives if the bombs had not been used against Japan.

“No question about it. Even if there had not been an invasion, there would have been a lot more people (dead) as a result of not ending the war.”

This is not a new opinion, obviously, but I wanted to establish that before I went on to quote the following:

Perhaps ironically, Kirk — like many people around the world — hopes the bomb will disappear from the globe.

“I think it should be abolished. I really do. But if we are going to have anybody that has an atomic bomb, then I want one more than anybody else,” Kirk said.

I am having trouble with this basically because I share that opinion, and I tend to suspect my own opinions of being ill-informed. It also seems paradoxical to me to claim that the decision to nuke was the right one at the time, but that it will always be the wrong one in the future. That doesn’t seem like a claim you can make. I guess you can argue that people didn’t have all the information back then–maybe they thought it was just a big bomb, and didn’t realize that with the explosion would come horrible radiation sickness. Assuming that was the case, then the previous argument can work. The decision was made without complete information. It was the best decision possible at the time. But now we know better. We know that there should always be another way.

Of course, I have no idea if the ignorance my rationalization requires was a reality for those who made the decision to use the bomb.

(I probably don’t need to point out that the second part of Kirk’s statement at the end of the article is problematic–as long as there are governments that share that opinion, there is zero chance of the bomb ever being “abolished”.)

The Augusta Chronicle has a feature about the area’s apparently awesome biking trails. The feature could have been hmm, I don’t know, longer, with further discussion of all the trails in the area, but heck…it is nice to see someone writing about biking.

Three minutes into the ride, I blindly followed Mrs. Allen down a hill that hooked to the left and led to a 20-foot-long, 2-foot-wide plank bridge that she easily traversed. The bridge spans a dried-out riverbed, which is fortunate because the ramp leading to it proved too steep, and when I turned left to regain my balance, over the edge I went.

Sounds like fun to me!

Click here to read “Hold on tight, and bring the bug spray” by Patrick Verel.

Ampontan at Japundit writes about the Asuka Onda Festival at the Asukaniimasu Shrine in Asuka-mura, Nara Prefecture.

The reason you’ll never read about this festival in a newspaper is that the central event is the simulated performance of the sex act on stage in front of an audience.

Read the article for the full description of the festivities. Man. I have got to see this.

Fortunately, it’s held on the first Sunday of February every year!

Via the Divine Miss Em.

There were some interesting questions on there. I was somewhat horrified by my estimate of how much time each week I spend on blogs…

Justin Klein’s descriptions of his amazing experiences at Ritsumeikan University have really made me jealous. Today’s especially. I really want to go.

Probably no way I can do it though.

I just called my internship people, and they told me to take as much time as I need.

They are really cool.

I woke up remembering how it felt to hold Gaila. I don’t know what I dreamed about, but they weren’t bad dreams.

When I got up, as usual, the first thing I did was sit down at my computer, check my downloads and read news. Dad had made fried potatoes and bacon and started on scrambled eggs with green onions. When the eggs were done, I poured myself some orange juice and sat down to enjoy breakfast with him. Mom, Hairy, and Mac got up and went outside. Like last night, Hairy had some trouble getting up the stairs on his way back in, but this time he made it.

Fox News is still talking about that girl who went missing in Aruba. Dad always has Fox News on, so we half-watched it while eating breakfast. When the weather came on, I noticed that their 3D graphic showed stars behind the Earth, and I wondered aloud whether or not the constellations were correct. Dad took that and ran with it: “It’ll be a huge expose on MSNBC! Those constellations were in the wrong place, which proves that the map they were using was at least two days old!”

After breakfast, I came back to my computer to write this post and put up some links. So here they are:

Kenyan grandfather, 73, kills leopard with hands

Peasant farmer Daniel M’Mburugu was tending to his potato and bean crops in a rural area near Mount Kenya when the leopard charged out of the long grass and leapt on him.

M’Mburugu had a machete in one hand but dropped that to thrust his fist down the leopard’s mouth. He gradually managed to pull out the animal’s tongue, leaving it in its death-throes.

Remember how metal stuff was sticking out of guard rails in Japan, and they thought it was sabotage? Turns out it was just caused by cars crashing into the railings. Oddly, I actually thought of that recently–the 13th Street Bridge over the Savannah River has metal fragments sticking out of it in places that I have never been able to figure out, and it made me wonder if cars crashed there and left pieces. And that made me wonder about the Japan stuff.

In any case, Yahoo! and Asahi both have the story.

In other news, apparently the police at Musashino Police Station in Tokyo are fingerprinting the homeless and keeping that information in a database. Why? Japan Today says,

Deputy chief officer Kiyonobu Yuge said the police fingerprinted the homeless for the purpose of confirming their identities in the case it became necessary in the future.

Mainichi has a much longer story:

Tokyo’s Metropolitan Police Department has for decades kept photographic, fingerprint and documentary records of homeless people living on Kichijoji streets, the Mainichi has learned.

Anybody working at the Musashino Police Station has access to the records, which the station has been keeping on file since 1984.

“We use them because (the homeless) don’t have registered addresses. It’s not great to go around gathering fingerprints, but if we don’t do that, there’s no way we can identify anybody,” station deputy chief Kiyonobu Yuge said. “We’ve got the permission of the individuals, so there’s no problem. I can’t tell you how many people we have on record.”

Naturally, people are upset by this.

Did you see what Charles Jenkins said about Kim Jong Il during his weeklong trip to the US? From Japan Today:

Jenkins said Kim is an “evil man” who lives a “luxury life…with sports cars, 200,000 American movie” videos and other things that his people do not have.

Jenkins said he had expected that American people would criticize him for deserting and going to North Korea, and said he regrets it as “I let down the American soldiers, the U.S. Army and the American people” and made it “difficult” for his family in the United States.

But he said he is “sure” that people would understand after learning of the “very difficult” time he went through in North Korea, which he had thought he would never be able to leave.

“The first 15 years were very difficult” with North Korea trying to “brainwash” him, Jenkins said. But he stressed, “I was never brainwashed.”

Apparently he’s writing a book about his life. It sounds like it’d be an interesting read. (I wonder if he’s writing it in English, Japanese, or both? Does he speak Japanese?)

So apparently the Tube is hotter than Miami now. Really hot. (Apologies for that website–when I loaded it, a big flash ad that looked like a list of news stories completely covered the actual article. There is a close button on the top right. Stupid flash ads…)

Heatwave conditions – and trains that are already packed – mean the ” apparent temperature” has soared above 40C on many routes.

The apparent temperature is an index produced by scientists to show how hot it feels, taking into effect air temperature and humidity.

Its results raise serious concerns about the safety of Tube passengers, with medical experts warning they face dehydration as a result of travelling on stifling carriages.

Thankfully, they found a couple of people to state the obvious:

Ted Collard, 45, a business consultant from Mitcham, said: “It’s bloody hot down here. Every day it is the same. They should put air conditioning in the stations.”

[…]

And American tourist Claudia Nie, 52, a manager at chemical firm in Ohio, said: “I am surprised it is so hot down here.

“It doesn’t even get this hot in Ohio. Why don’t they have air conditioning or something?

From Asahi.com:

Uchiyama, a native of Gifu Prefecture, began his woodworking career making traditional inlaid wood pictures, in which colors and textures of different woods are blended in various figures and patterns. He learned the art from his father, and eventually started his own business in Tokyo.

Then 25 years ago, when business was slow, a friend showed him how to make a bird carving. Before long, Uchiyama was showing his handiwork at crafts events around Japan.

At one, a blind person ran his fingers over one small carving.

“Its song is so loud, I never imagined it to be such a little bird,” he commented.

The words resonated with Uchiyama.

He decided he wanted to help blind people “see” his birds.

Since he is so exacting with his work, his wood carvings tend to be pretty expensive. Here’s what he does to make his models accessible to more people:

First, Uchiyama makes a carved wooden mold of a bird figure. Then, he pours a resin mixture into the mold, enabling him to make many copies of the same carving. He has used this method to replicate carvings of eight species, including the kingfisher, sparrow and the great tit.

The models feature each species’ characteristic curve of beak, feather details, even down to the shape of the claw. He embeds a recording of the bird’s song in each figure.

Listening to the birdsong, a blind person can feel the bird’s shape and imagine how it flies.

This is a really neat story.

At about a quarter to five Mom took Gaila outside and washed the majority of the blood off her leg. Gaila tended to bleed from her mouth onto her leg and then lick at it, smearing it all over. Once she was clean Mom (or somebody) spread a blanket in the floor of the van, and then everyone–Mom, AJ, Ben, and I–started out the door. No one actually said “Let’s go”. We just all sort of went.

I had thought I wanted to take a picture of how Gaila’s face looked, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. As the boys moved towards the door, I picked up my purse and left the camera where it was.

“Come on, Gaila,” we said, and she obediently followed us outside and around to the van, and then climbed right in. I sat on the chair near her (Connor usually sits in that seat these days, so I had to move the booster seat) and brushed her to get rid of all the hair she was shedding. She eventually relaxed and laid down on the blanket.

The trip down 169 to Harrodsburg and then up to the vet seemed really long, and the winding bumpiness of the roads didn’t help. “Maybe it’s your shocks,” AJ said when Mom commented sarcastically about how nice and flat the road was.

I just brushed and petted Gaila as much as I could. She was alert, and it seemed like her pain and discomfort weren’t bothering her, but I knew that was because she was nervous and excited to see where she was going.

When we got to the vet, she wouldn’t get out of the van until I did, and then she wouldn’t follow me in. She tried to hobble away, and AJ had to pick her up and carry her. I had been imagining that she knew where she was going and what was going to happen, and that she accepted it, so seeing this made me feel a little sick. I didn’t want her last moments to be filled with fear.

For some reason the vet had her weighed–54 pounds–and then AJ lifted her onto the exam table, where a towel had been spread. At first Gaila sat down when we told her, but as time passed with her on the table (with the vet making what to me was unnecessary small talk), she grew more and more nervous, and finally stood and refused to sit again.

“I guess it won’t get any easier,” the vet said finally. He’d been talking about how he was there when Gaila and her brothers and sisters were born, and how no three dogs from such a pitiful beginning could have found more love. “I wish you could have seen her when I first did,” he said. “She was this big.” And he held his fingers about four inches apart. It seemed pretty unbelievable…but I have a hard time believing that when she was still just a puppy, and I picked her out for my very own, I was able to–and did–carry her around inside my shirt. (Back then I wore flannel shirts over T-shirts, so I would button the bottom of the flannel and carry her in it like a pouch.) Eleven years later, I could still pick her up (awkwardly), but there’s no way she would fit in my shirt.

I had been standing close to Gaila, my hand on her chest to keep her from leaping off the table, but then the vet eased her to her haunches and his assistant moved between us, lying Gaila down and holding her. I squeezed back in so that I was close to her face, and stroked her head. The vet shaved a patch of hair on Gaila’s remaining front leg; she trembled, but didn’t escape the grasp of the assistant.

“Don’t worry,” I said as the vet slid the needle under her skin. “You’ll feel better soon.”

The vet said something encouraging along those same lines, but I was startled by the sight of Gaila’s blood wisping out into the pink liquid in the large syringe and didn’t listen to him. To be honest, I was pretty much ignoring everything he said anyway.

The overdose worked faster than I was expecting. The vet’s assistant let go of Gaila and I pretty much collapsed on top of her, wrapping my arm around her and pressing my face into her neck and just stroking her. Mom and my brothers petted her and rubbed my back. I heard Mom crying and the boys snuffling.

“Cancer is a terrible thing,” the vet said. “In humans and in animals.” For a moment I was incredulous. Why did he have to say that? was all I could think. I have long drawn parallels between myself and Gaila, and for some reason, at that moment, the thought that cancer had caused all this was unbearable, even though it’s true and always has been. I had been calling it a tumor. Somehow to hear it called by its true name was shocking and hurtful.

I knew when she was gone even though I wasn’t looking at her. I was holding her, and one moment there was still life in her, and the next there just…wasn’t. I drew back out of some instinctive distaste at embracing a corpse. My fingers plucked awkwardly, pointlessly at the hair around her ears. She couldn’t feel me petting and loving her anymore.

Shortly after that, a final shudder of breath passed out of her body. I didn’t want to be petting her anymore, there didn’t seem to be a use to it. She was gone. I started crying harder, and I wrapped my arm around AJ and turned my face away.

The vet waited a little longer before checking for a heartbeat, and then said, “I’ll give you some time alone with her.” He and his assistant left.

I was hugging AJ and clinging to Mom’s arm and crying, but I wasn’t sobbing yet. I turned back to the corpse and knelt into it and kissed her head and whispered, “I love you, baby.” And then I sobbed. I collapsed onto the table, face in my arms, and wailed. Someone just beyond the room murmured something sympathetically. At some point, AJ said, “You did the right thing.” But I wasn’t worried about that. My dog had to die. My dog was dead. There’s no blame. There’s just total helplessness.

I let myself cry for as long as I had to, but was able to compose myself quickly, for the sake of my family and the people in the other room. When I raised away from the table AJ dragged me into a fierce hug and held me for a long time. Then I hugged Mom, and then Ben.

Mom said we’d go ahead and go, and said for me to come out when I was ready, and left the room. I looked at Gaila’s body. It oddly seemed to be moving. It was so still that my brain was compensating for how unnatural she seemed. I evaluated her clinically, walked around the table and gazed into her lifeless eyes.

My dog wasn’t there anymore.

She was at peace–however stupid that sounds.

I felt like I had to say something, and I wanted to let AJ know that I didn’t feel guilty, so I kept gazing into Gaila’s eyes and said, “I’m glad you can rest now.” One of the boys murmured something in agreement. But that wasn’t enough, it wasn’t right to just say that, so I went on, “I wish it didn’t have to be this way,” and again one of the boys made a noise. “But I’m glad you can rest.”

And that was pretty much all I could say–no great speeches came into my mind about what a great dog she was, how much I loved her, how beautiful and devoted and competitive and strong she was. I knew they would come if I looked for them, but I also knew that with them would come more sobbing, and I didn’t want to stay with her body anymore. Her body wasn’t her. It was time to let it, and her, go.

“Goodbye, sweetheart,” I said, and kissed her head. New tears burned and threatened to fall. I thought that maybe the boys would leave me alone with her a little, and said, “Okay, we can go now.” But they didn’t move, so I preceded them out of the exam room and through the front office and out the door to the van. I thought as I left that I should turn and look at the people behind the counter and maybe say thank you to them, but I didn’t want to, so I didn’t.

On the ride back I did not need to focus on comforting a sick, frightened dog. I would never have to worry about that again.

I looked at the beautiful green rolling hills of my native Kentucky and loved them. I thought of Gaila. I thought back on the experience of her death as much as I could without reliving it. Then I thought that someday Mom would die, and that I didn’t know if I would be able to handle it. Mom is the type of person who seems like she should live forever.

I tried to stop thinking about death after that. Towards the end of the ride, I even engaged in some small talk about how a Lowe’s is being built at the intersection of 169 and the bypass.

We got back and spent some awkward time in the office together. We talked about morbid and silly things like how we wanted to be taken care of when we died. I said I wanted to be cremated. AJ said he didn’t know. Ben said he wanted to be stuffed. AJ reminded Ben that once he’d said he wanted to be set ablaze and sent off on a ship like a Viking, and a discussion ensued about whether Ben or the boat would burn up first. A metal boat was suggested by someone, and AJ remarked that it would then wash up at England with nothing in it. Ben concluded, “Well, if I’m stuffed, like this–” and he struck a horror-show Frankenstein pose “–then when I wash up on England, I’ll look like this–” and he made the same pose. I had to laugh.

Gaila’s ashes will be ready sometime next week. I had planned to drive home tomorrow. Based on how I feel tomorrow, I will either go with that plan, or stay a little longer. Logan’s birthday is tomorrow, and his party is Saturday, so it would be nice to be here for that. I would just have to call the internship and tell them I can’t make it this week.

I don’t know what I want to do yet.

If I had any doubts about putting Gaila down–and who am I kidding? Of course I had doubts–they have been thoroughly dispelled by being here and seeing her quality of life.

She is strong and brave, and she knows she’s loved. But she is in pain. She has trouble breathing. When I let her lick my plate after lunch, the motion of her tongue sent the stench of her rotting flesh all over the room.

Earlier, when she was napping and I knelt to pet her, she started out of her sleep and then looked reproachfully at me as if I had broken her peace, plunged her back into torment by awakening her. The pain overwhelmed any happiness she might have gained from my affection. She didn’t wag her tail at all.

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly, and let her be.

I think a lot during the ~8 hour drive from Augusta to Nicholasville. Today, I was able to listen to anime mp3s thanks to the generosity of my good friend Hai Phan, and that took the edge off, especially when nice fast ones came on, like the Eurobeat Initial D stuff. But for the most part it’s just driving, and thinking. The music just gives my brain an additional something to work with.

Today, I thought about my old college roommate, and how things might have gone if we had never met during summer orientation and arranged to live in the same suite.

I thought about my husband, and how sometimes I have to explain to him my emotional needs. I wondered briefly what it would be like to have a husband who just instinctively knew what to do to comfort me.

I thought about my dream, even though I tried not to. I thought about the parts I didn’t mention in my earlier post. Weird sexual parts that added a creepy patina to the already dreadful death-knowledge.

I thought, briefly, about Gaila’s last shuddering breath.

I thought about how I’m giving up on dieting temporarily, and how I wasn’t really hungry anyway and could wait to eat until Chattanooga. (I later had a chicken burrito supreme from Taco Bell and a large chocolate shake from Hardee’s. And I must say, they were both excellent.)

I took pictures of skyscrapers, blasted cliff faces, trees, and rain. Yes, while driving.

I thought about how when I think, I have a feeling, and then I try to put it into words as if I was going to post it on this journal. Sometimes I will go over a sentence or paragraph again and again while the rest of the thought is congealing.

I don’t remember any of the “posts” I “wrote” on the drive. That’s a shame, because I think I had at least one decent metaphor.

I thought about how Luke and Tycho and Eric Burns have distinctive writing styles, and how I don’t feel that my writing has any particular style at all. It’s just there, and when I try to augment it I feel like a fake.

I thought about the nature of liking people. Part of me feels that I should be able to like everyone. I stupidly told someone in a chat room recently that I didn’t like him. He asked why, and I said something to the effect of “We share zero values.” He responded with incredulity at my criteria, stating, “That’s poor.” I don’t know what better reason there could be for not liking someone than not sharing values with them. At least it’s an ideological divide, rather than one based on race or gender or something that can’t be controlled. But then I wondered if I was simply trying to justify my harsh appraisals of other people–wondered if there truly is a good reason not to like someone. Yuuri–who has become my hero in pretty much every regard–tends to like everyone, regardless of who they are. He’ll get mad at people, but he has never said to someone, “I don’t like you.” Not even Adelbert. His “justice”, rather, is based on his intrinsic belief that people are good. He points out what they’ve done wrong, expecting that they will agree and change their ways. (He is actually more successful when he isn’t invoking the power of the Maou, which typically scares everyone into running away and doesn’t accomplish much other than saving the Mazoku’s asses. Except that one time where he saved the world. But I digress.)

I thought about Aunt Carol, who is all alone now on her farm in Illinois. Uncle Lee died a year ago of a stroke. Carol has had a heart transplant and is very physically weak. She is getting along solely through the strength of her will. I thought of how I would like to go to her and help her…and I thought of how temporary, how band-aid, such a visit would be. I thought that she should move closer to one of her sisters–my mom–and allow herself to be helped. But then I thought that she would be giving up everything she has worked so hard to achieve with her home and her animals. It would be so hard to lose that independence, even though technically she has lost it already.

I thought that there are no simple solutions in life.

I also ate some cheese crackers with peanut butter and drank a Mr. Pibb, and got sunburned up my left arm and in a patch down my left cheek. I drove through two torrential rainstorms that left visibility close to nil. I listened to Conrad’s Theme on repeat for a long long time. Fuji Syuusuke’s “Black Rain” came on randomly twice, each time during one of the thunderstorms.

When I got up this morning, I was so nauseous I didn’t think I would be able to eat at all. I couldn’t stop thinking about my dream and about Gaila for a long time. I read news and worked on packing until I felt better, then ate some Crunch Berries. When I finally left home at 11am, I had pretty much clamped down the nausea and memory of the dream. I purposefully didn’t bring any Touch mp3s, because they would remind me of the dream. (To explain why would be a spoiler.)

I ultimately enjoyed my drive, my time to myself. And when I got here I spent time with each of my parents, and Connor and Logan and AJ and Faye. And it was nice.

My mother told me a story about her old dog, Buttons. Dad’s grandmother, Ma McCormick, had asked to keep the dog, and Mom agreed to give her Buttons because Dad didn’t like her, and her barking tended to wake us babies up. Buttons aged and eventually died. Ma said to Mom, “I knew she was going to die, so I put her in the barn.”

Mom said she wished she hadn’t told her that. She said that Ma wanted to avoid painful things, get them out of sight.

I think I have that trait, too, and it shames me.

Gaila’s breathing as she lies across the room, just beyond the partition where I can’t see her, is ragged and wet, and her coughing sounds like giblets falling into a pail.

Her face is cottage cheese…but she still wags her tail.

I watched someone die. I knew he was going to die, but it took so long for it to happen. And meanwhile, none of the people around him realized he was dying. Maybe if they’d taken him to the hospital it would have been okay, but they didn’t do anything.

A couple of times he actually got out of bed, and that just made it worse.

After he died, everything was a mess. I had a new nephew named Ben who was about one year old, and he ran into the street. I ran after him screaming “Ben! Ben!” and was able to catch up to him.

Then some terrorists shot these guys who worked at a radio station for saying bad things about them, but the radio guys shoved a container of gasoline at them as they tried to escape, and Dad’s workshop went up in flames. I had to use Hairy’s body as a shield from the explosion, and I hated myself.

I just spent an hour or so reading this.

The sad thing is, I feel like I’ve read it before!

It’s still funny, in any case.

Gaila will be put to sleep either tomorrow (the 20th) or the next day. I’m going to be with her, and to see her ashes buried in the backyard. I’ll leave sometime tomorrow morning.

Apparently the tumor is so big that it is tearing her face apart, and her muzzle is rotting and falling to pieces. She’s bleeding everywhere, and her situation will not improve.

I will be there with her in the end, unless she passes away before I get there.