Post Office pets

The New Neo Posted on by

I was at the post office today and bought a set of stamps. The choices I was offered consisted of the basic one, and then a set of trucks versus a set of pets.

trucks

pets

Pressed for time, with a line behind me which precluded asking for further alternatives and lengthy deliberation, I went for the pets instead of the trucks as the image I preferred to present to my bill collectors (the only use I seem to have anymore for stamps). Some of you might have chosen differently, no doubt.

But here’s my question: hermit crabs?? People keep hermit crabs as pets?

The post office wants you to know that people do keep hermit crabs as pets:

crab

Well, why not? People keep turtles and iguanas, too (they each have a stamp devoted to them, as well, although the post office calls the former “tortoises“).

Intrigued by the hermit crab news, what did I do? Why, Googled it, of course, and found this (from PETA, naturally), which lists seven reasons you shouldn’t buy a hermit crab as a pet, with the following summary:

Never, ever buy a hermit crab. They are not “starter pets” or trinkets. Crabs are complex, sensitive animals who want to live in the wild, not in a cage. Even the most well-meaning person who purchases crabs will never be able to give them the life that they deserve.

If you or someone you know already has a hermit crab, check out this hermit crab care guide for helpful tips on keeping crabs happy. Hermit crabs need companionship, plenty of climbing room, substrate to bury themselves in for molting, humidity, warm temperatures, extra shells, fresh and salt water (dechlorinated aquarium salt only), and much, much more! Never release a captive crab back into the wild.

That’s a lot more trouble than I would want to go to for the dubious pleasure of caring for my very own hermit crab. So I don’t have to be talked into not buying one. But I wonder why anyone would want one (I wonder that about a lot of pets, actually, although not dogs or cats). I’m not sure I buy the sales pitch on this site promoting exactly what PETA is railing against, the idea of hermit crabs as “starter pets”:

Hermit crabs have their own personalities and are fun starter pets for families and classrooms. They are easy to care for and their crabby antics, like climbing, digging, molting and shell switching, as are entertaining as they are educational.

How entertaining and educational is that, though?

More fall photos

The New Neo Posted on by

More photos from Fall 2016 in New England, taken by me with nothing more fancy than my cell phone camera.

This one could be any season (except winter), although the leaves on the ground are a giveaway, I guess:

fall-oct-2016-059

It not all about the light. But a lot of it’s about the light:

fall-oct-2016-083

These pumpkins already glow without being turned into Jack O’Lanterns:

fall-oct-2016-089

And the sumac’s ready for its closeup, Mr. De Mille:

fall-oct-2016-025-001

Another great Frost quote

The New Neo Posted on by

This one:

”We go to college,” [Frost] wrote, ”to be given one more chance to learn to read in case we haven’t learned in high school.” He dropped out of both Harvard and Dartmouth, and married his high-school sweetheart with few career prospects other than a fresh, unconventional talent for teaching children English and Latin. (The way to read a poet, he maintained, is ”to settle down like a revolving dog and make ourselves at home among the poems, completely at our ease as to how they should be taken.”)

When I first read that, for a split second I saw the phrase as “revolving door.” But “revolving dog” is great, and I know just what he means. So does this guy, who tells us everything you always wanted to know (or didn’t want to know) about the behavior:

And this guy has more to say about dogs’ pre-poop spinning. They have research on this, folks:

Today’s meme: “Any GOP candidate would have been slimed by the MSM and the Democrats”

The New Neo Posted on by

You see it on this blog among some commenters, and you see it from highly esteemed conservative bloggers such as John Hinderaker at Powerline: the argument that the current attacks on Trump are much like attacks on previous GOP candidates such as McCain and Romney (although somewhat different in content for Romney), and that much the same would have happened (and will happen) to any GOP nominee:

Did Romney and the GOP get credit in the press for the candidates’s outstanding character? No. Romney, who helped to create tens of thousands of jobs at Bain Capital, was denounced as a “vulture capitalist” and blamed, absurdly, for one woman’s developing cancer. The Washington Post made a front page story of the fact that 50 years earlier, when he was in high school, he and others had cut a classmate’s hair. Oh, and Romney was a racist, too. Does anyone remember why? I don’t.

The cycle before that, GOP voters nominated John McCain. McCain is a great patriot, a man of extraordinary character and courage who survived years of torture and abuse as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Did the liberal media give Republicans credit for nominating such a hero? No. The New York Times, to its everlasting shame, peddled a false rumor that McCain had an affair with a lobbyist. (Bill Clinton would have done that before breakfast.) It also berated McCain for failing to release his medical records”“which, actually, he did, unlike Bill Clinton and Barack Obama…

What’s the point? I’m not really sure. I certainly am not in favor of nominating candidates of poor or marginal character. But the hypocrisy of the liberal media is galling…

What is the point of nominating someone of extraordinary moral stature, like Mitt Romney, if the political press will not only unanimously refuse to acknowledge the fact, but worse, join in a campaign of deception to smear Romney in the eyes of voters?

Hinderaker further links the MSM perpetual war against Republican candidates as causative in the decline of our political culture.

And I would say all of this is true. Very true. Extremely true. And also somewhat irrelevant this year.

As I’ve said in the comments section, Romney didn’t lose because of those attacks. They sure didn’t help, but here are some reasons he lost that were much more important:

(1) He was running against a rather popular incumbent. Not popular with you or me, but still pretty popular with a lot of people. That counts for a lot.

(2) He had a manner that was seen as distant, stiff, and patrician.

(3) The “47%” remarks that were leaked.

(4) Some people think Hurricane Sandy was a big factor in giving Obama a moment to shine, right before the election.

(5) Some conservatives didn’t vote for him because he was considered a RINO. No one knows how many did this, or whether it would have made a difference, but the election was relatively close and it might have.

Those were the ones that came to mind for me. There were more offered by commenters “geokstr” and “Spiral” here and here.

What’s more, George Bush won despite the attacks on him. Remember those last-minute stories about his drunk driving? That was an attempt to administer the coup de grace, but it didn’t work. The election was close, of course, but I don’t think it was because of those smears.

Same for McCain. He did not lose because of some last-minute accusations of infidelity. Of that I am nearly certain.

As I’ve said many times (and as Hinderaker also acknowledges), Trump was and is uniquely vulnerable. These attacks are working because they are congruent with what we already know of his character. They are plausible, whether or not they are true, and so they hit home. What’s more—and this is important—they began with the words of the candidate himself as the lead-in to the later revelations by the women.

And he already was losing, before these attacks. He was already a highly unpopular candidate. So much that, although the attacks may deal Trump a (metaphorical) death blow, he was already (metaphorically) ill in the sense of appealing to voters in the general. In that sense, they are more the equivalent of the anti-Goldwater Daisy ad than anything else, even though the subject matter is very different. Goldwater, a very upright and moral man, was already losing without that ad, but it got traction (and those of us alive back then remember it today) because many people already saw him as a wild extremist politically. If that had not been the case, and if LBJ hadn’t been extremely popular at the time, the ad wouldn’t have mattered one whit.

Had Cruz or Rubio or Fiorina been nominated, you can bet your bottom dollar that they would have been smeared. For Cruz it would have been religion (and more of the type of stories Trump winked at during the primaries, involving Cruz and affairs, although that was absurd). For Rubio, probably more stuff about the Gang of 8, in order to turn conservatives even further against him. For Fiorina, Hewlett-Packard. And although the stories might have succeeded in harming their chances, I don’t think they would have, in the end—especially and most particularly for Rubio, who has the most attractive personality of the three. We have no way to know for sure, of course. But I strongly strongly suspect it.

It’s moot now. As many have pointed out, Trump is the nominee. But it’s something to keep in mind in the future. There are those who say there is no future for the right. I disagree, although I agree that its future looks very very shaky right now. But the right won’t get anywhere nominating candidates with such major personal negatives.

Another wonderful makeover

The New Neo Posted on by

I don’t even recognize this woman from her “before”:

I guess I can’t stop at just one. Here’s another; she’s recognizable, but such a difference, and so happy!

And this woman started out beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. You think beautiful can’t be made more beautiful? Just watch:

Further musings on a bunch of assorted things

The New Neo Posted on by

Remember back when Trump was running in the primaries, and how his supporters excoriated Romney—particularly after Romney spoke out against Trump—for having been such a loser in 2012? I wonder if those same people are now rethinking how easily they put down Romney, and how much they underestimated how difficult it is to fight the Democratic coalition of politicians and press?

Yeah, it’s a rhetorical question. I doubt that many of them are in fact rethinking it. I think they either comfort themselves with the notion that Trump is still poised to win (which I believe is wishful thinking—but hey, stranger things have happened on this earth), or they praise Trump’s pugnacious style of fighting over its efficacy.

When Romney made that speech last March, I wrote:

…[D]oes anyone on earth think Hillary doesn’t have her own attack on Trump already planned, and that Romney’s will pale compared with hers? Let me assure you, of one thing I am certain, and that is that Hillary doesn’t need Romney to do her opposition research.

I think the truth of that is certainly obvious.

And I repeat, just for the sake of emphasis: yes, there would have been vicious attacks mounted on any GOP member who might have been nominated instead. And those attacks might have worked. But I don’t think so, because Hillary Clinton is a much much weaker opponent in 2016 than Barack Obama was in 2012. In addition, Trump was uniquely vulnerable, not just to sexual charges, but to a host of things based on his history and embarrassing videos (for example, they haven’t ever really used one topic that I thought they would use—his nasty personal and snobbish remarks that were part of his attempts to evict people in Scotland and Atlantic City). There’s so much to hit him with that it could go on every day for years and the supply wouldn’t be exhausted, and they wouldn’t even have to make stuff up or distort it; just show Trump being himself.

I was driving home from the market last night and turned on my radio. A talk show was going on—I have no idea whose it was—and I listened to about five minutes of it. It featured a woman railing against Trump, and then the host said to her, “So, you’re with Hillary, right?” “Wrong!” she practically yelled out, with great conviction.

Then she went on to say how bereft she felt, how she had no candidate to vote for at all. And the host agreed, and said, “Yes, there are a lot of us this year.” They briefly talked about writing someone in, and it struck my once again that if there could be a concerted campaign for one alternative write-in person, that person might actually have a chance.

But it’s not going to happen. Too hard to organize, too hard to get traction.

And I thought—not for the first time—how much this election reminds me of a Greek tragedy. You watch the play knowing it’s inevitable, but wanting to somehow intervene and stop it. The ancient Greeks felt that knowing the plot didn’t make the tragedy less keen; it made it more kenn.

The analogy breaks down, of course, because we certainly don’t know the details of the outcome. But we know we are caught in a terrible, somewhat-foreseeable mess, one that no one seems capable of stopping.

The reaction of a lot of people is to wash their hands of it all and retreat to private concerns and private pleasures. Others plot some sort of rebellion. Some cling to hope. I think it’s rather sad, however, that some reluctant Trump supporters consider the notion that Trump would be impeached if he overreaches to be a hopeful and comforting thought. It’s a thought I don’t happen to share, however—I don’t think it would happen. But I very much understand the need to take our comfort where we can, even if it’s cold comfort.

Wikileaks, Hillary, Democratic tactics/strategy, and cynicism

The New Neo Posted on by

One of the many very usedful functions of the Trump bimbo eruptions is to distract people from the constant revelations about Hillary—and not just Hillary, or even primarily Hillary, but the way in which the Democratic Party is helped along by institutions that should be objective but are almost wholly in the tank for liberalism and/or the left.

There’s so much it is difficult to assimilate even a small portion of it, or know where to begin. You can Google it yourself, or click here. The story is complex and many-faceted, as opposed to the more simple (not to mention, sexual) focus of the current Trump imbroglio, the timing of which is no accident.

I used the word “revelations” to describe the Wikileaks information. But it’s probably not a great word for it, because it implies something new and “not before realized.” However, I think most of this was realized by the right, if not all the details of it. At this point, however, the American public is so jaded, so partisan, so weary, so confused, so disinterested (take your pick, or a combination), that I doubt any of it will matter.

Years ago I wrote about the aptness of Hillary’s famous statement to Congress, “What difference does it make?” And now I’m going to quote myself:

If the public doesn’t care about a certain tree falling in the forest, does it actually make a sound, even if the right is fussing about it?

The right has been outraged by a sequence of events and statements that have occurred under Obama’s watch, beginning with his 2008 campaign. Some are rather trivial (“corpse-man”) and some important (“bankrupt” the coal plants; “spread the wealth”). All have gained traction only on the right, because a majority (perhaps a small majority, but a majority nonetheless, and I believe a growing one) has answered the question “what difference does it make?” with the words “none at all.”

These are things that would have outraged an earlier generation. In fact, they have outraged an earlier generation; older people did not vote for Obama in large numbers (among voters 65 and older, Romney won 56% to 44%). But Hillary is correct; to most voters, Benghazi, and a host of other things that used to be considered important, make no difference at all.

One reason, which may seem somewhat paradoxical but really is not, is widespread cynicism. If the public doesn’t expect integrity or truth from what used to be called our public servants (what a quaint phrase!), then lies and strategic stonewalling will not bother most people at all. What matters is what those public servants can get for you, and what they can scare you into thinking the opposition will take away from you (tampons, anyone?)

It’s only gotten worse since January of 2013, when that was written.

On grabbing someone by the pussy, and consent

The New Neo Posted on by

Boy, that’s one title I didn’t think I’d be typing in this lifetime.

But politics makes strange—bedfellows. And so I’ll briefly deconstruct the phrase.

First, the actual quote by Trump:

Yeah, that’s her. With the gold. I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful ”” I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything”¦Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.

Many Trump-defenders have said that this implies consent on the part of the women. “They let you do it” is most definitely the operative phrase. Is that consent? Let’s see.

These days, colleges seem to think that sexual exchanges must consist of a series of overt questions and answers, much as in a courtroom. “May I touch you on the shoulder?” “Yes.” [* see NOTE below] “May I put my arm around you?” “Yes.” May I kiss you?” “Yes.” “May I touch your breast?” “Yes.” Up and down and around what used to euphemistically be called “the bases,” I suppose it could also include—somewhere along the way—“May I grab you by the pussy?”

Hey, I don’t have my finger on the pulse of dating mores these days, but I think that’s the way it’s supposed to go in 2016. But among actual living, breathing human beings (which still constitute the majority of the human race, I believe), it doesn’t usually go quite that way. A lot of this back-and-forth is ordinarily unspoken and subtle, which makes the issue of consent a thorny one.

We’re not going to solve the issue here today, either, because the situation is far from crystal clear. But if we want to take the Trump/pussy controversy seriously (and why not?), it brings up very large questions involving sex and power, men and women, and how consent is perceived and granted or should be perceived and granted.

As I understand his words, Trump is talking crudely, but he’s talking about the interface between power and sex, how men (and probably some women) either use their power to exploit people or use their power to get more sex from others through implied consent, and whether their underlings (who may be ambitious and on the way up, and hope to get something from the interaction, too) freely acquiesce or feel coerced, and why.

I would add that there are good reasons why some professions that involve a great deal of power—that of therapist, for example—feature an absolute prohibition on sex with a patient or client, because the power differential and the possibility for exploitation is considered so very great. Of course, real estate developer/TV celebrity is not considered one of those professions.

I don’t pretend to know what actually happened between Trump and all these women, and whether there really was a lot of unwanted pussy-grabbing. As I’ve said before in other posts and comments, the incident tells me nothing I didn’t already know about Trump and nothing I didn’t already know about the intricate dance between men and women. What it does tell me is that most people don’t want that kind of talk from their presidents and that the release of this audio doesn’t help Trump, who was already in deep trouble. But those who defend him because they believe the word “let” implies consent, and those who excoriate him because they believe the word “let” is meaningless here and the operative word is “grab,” are both incorrect. We are actually treading in one of the most unclear areas in the realm of relations between the sexes, and that’s saying something.

[* NOTE: Apologies to James Joyce.]

The “Burn it down!” crowd seems to be getting its wish

The New Neo Posted on by

I have watched this tragedy unfold for several years now.

By using the word “watched,” don’t think I mean I’m some sort of disinterested, Olympian observer. It has been very difficult, and this year it’s reached a crescendo, although I expect it to go on past this election cycle.

The tragedy I’m talking about is the purposeful whipping up of anger on the right by the right, for the purposes of taking out on the GOP what should be taken out on the Democrats. I’ve written countless posts about what’s happening and why, and countless others on the lies and distortions told by the people doing this. The idea is that the GOP could and should have stopped Obama and are therefore no different (or very marginally different) from the Democrats, and revenge must be taken on the former in order to purge the GOP and/or destroy it in order that a newer, brighter conservative movement could grow and take its rightful place as leaders, somehow convincing the greater voting public of its superiority to the Democrats, who after years in power would be proven to be failures.

Or something like that. I was never part of the movement—in fact, I actively opposed it and tried to correct its distortions with the facts—so I might not be stating the goals with perfect exactness. But I sure read a great deal of what was written by those who were part of the movement, and that’s what I saw, especially beginning in 2012 with the nomination of Mitt Romney, who seemed to them just one in a long line of worthless RINOs for whom they would no longer vote.

Now, of course, most of this group (perhaps all?) either support Trump wholeheartedly and have from the start, or support him merely as a tool to destroy the GOP, or both. They have been among the most vocal people singing Trump’s praises, and bullying and insulting and threatening others who won’t get in line. Who are they? Some are understandably disgruntled people on the right. Some are formerly apolitical people (or people who had become completely disillusioned) who have been energized by Trump. Some are white supremacists who see Trump as a way to power for them. Some are leftists toying with the right and successfully manipulating it, bent on its destruction. I believe that the first and second groups are by far the largest of the four, but the third and fourth groups are not infinitesimal and have been players in this who cannot be discounted.

Let me add right now that no one of the destructive “burn it down, watch the flames” sort remains among the regular commenters on this blog, although several Trump supporters do remain. The others have either left of their own accord or were banned by me without public fanfare. If I had not done that, this blog would have gone the way of many others and become some sort of Breitbart satellite.

Now that exactly what the rest of us predicted would happen has happened—Trump’s star is falling, the Democrats have trotted out the damaging stuff they have on him with much more to come before they’re finished, and it has been revealed (just as we said) that Trump was the one they were waiting for all along because he was the easiest to beat—I’ve noticed the anger coming out in the “Burn it Down!” (sometimes known as “Let it Burn!”) folks. You can see this rage on display rather prominently in the comments section of quite a few blogs. One of them I regularly frequent is Ace’s, which is hardly the only one or even the most rabid one, but it’s one I happen to read.

The chatter goes something like this: time to destroy Paul Ryan! The GOPe didn’t do what we wanted [see this, however]. They didn’t stop a single Democratic agenda [see this, however]. They never repealed Obamacare, even [see this, however]. They are the Dems-lite. Destroy them. Trump will get them after he’s elected. I’m enjoying this; such fun! Break out a beer and watch the festivities.

At the same time, the same people are saying that everyone on the right must vote for Donald Trump, because Hillary is worse, and she will (just as one example) get to appoint SCOTUS justices.

Hey, if you destroy the GOP lead in Congress, how would even a President Trump get his SCOTUS nominees approved? Or get any legislation passed? Or is he magical, doesn’t need legislation, and can just wave his kingly hand (Maine’s governor seems to think so)?

This has all been going on for years among the “Burn it down” crowd, which I see as mostly a bunch of nihilistic, angry infants. They have finally found their champion in the miraculous Trump—ironically, the biggest RINO of them all, who used to praise Hillary and Nancy Pelosi to the skies.

Ah, but it feels so good to be warmed by the “burn it down” flames. Especially when your candidate is looking weak. Polls, you say? When Trump was in front during the primaries, polls were golden. But ever since his nomination—funny thing, the polls have gone crooked. Not to be trusted. You’ll see. You’ll see. He’s really on top.

And the movement doesn’t need the likes of that traitor Paul Ryan, or a Republican Congress. Once Trump is inaugurated, that will be the moment when we begin to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; that will be the moment when the rise of the oceans begins to slow and our planet begins to heal; that will be the moment when we end a war and secure our nation and restore our image as the last, best hope on Earth…

Oops, wrong speech.

What’s someone like Ryan, or Cruz or Rubio, to do? Trump throws the entire GOP and all its elected officials into an insoluble quandary. Fail to support him and you’re accused of really being a Hillary-loving liberal at heart, showing your true colors at last. Support him and you’ve compromised nearly every principle you have. There’s no good way out, unless you want to go into the private sector.

As it is, we are now on track not only for the Hillary Clinton presidency I predicted back in December of 2012, but for Hillary Clinton plus a Democratic Senate and a relatively close House. Ah, that’ll show those GOPe RINOs!

Ode to a Frog

The New Neo Posted on by

My ex-husband has been going through his papers, and yesterday he found something I thought had been long lost—a poem I had written as a 14-year-old sophomore in high school.

How it came to be in his stuff I don’t know, but he’s somewhat of a pack rat. Did he find it in some desk in my parents’ house many years ago? Did he rescue it, put it away, and forget he had it? I can’t recall having seen it since around the time I wrote it—and that’s a long, long, long time ago.

Before seeing it again, I had remembered that the poem once existed. I had remembered what prompted me to write it. But I remembered very little about the poem itself. So seeing it again was like reading something brand new—a note from my 14-year-old self, a glimpse into my fourteen-year-old mind.

The poem, which I will reproduce in its entirety here in a moment, wasn’t written as a school assignment. It was written for my own pleasure, and out of my own feelings of guilt. The occasion was an incident in school biology class that disturbed me greatly at the time. The description of it in the poem is what actually had happened in real life.

At fourteen, I was already familiar with a poem that is still one of my very favorites, Robert Burns’ “To a Mouse, On Turning Her Up in Her Nest With the Plough, November 1785” (I’ve previously written about the poem on this blog, with an excerpt, here). Burns’ poem is a long apology to a mouse whose home (“thy wee bit housie”—love those Scottish diminutives!) he had upended, and it ends with a meditation on the plight of man and beast in nature and in civilization.

My little verse isn’t up there with Burns’, not by a longshot (for one thing, I don’t have that wonderful dialect to work with). But I think that for a fourteen-year-old it’s not half-bad. I’ve resisted the urge to clean it up and improve it from the perspective of my much-older self. I’ll just add that although I use the word “experiment” in the title, the incident that sparked the poem was more of an exercise than an experiment. We were divided into pairs and each given (that is, loaned) a live frog. The phrase “prep sheet” refers to the instruction sheets we were given along with the frogs, and the instructions listed in the poem were what we actually were supposed to do. “Hubbard” is a pseudonym for the name of the real biology teacher.

Ode to a Frog: On Carelessly Breaking its Leg in a Bio Experiment

Frail thing, what did you ever do
To me, to have this done to you?
I never saw you ‘fore this day
And wish it could have stayed that way.

The prep sheet said to pinch your toes,
To poke your eye, to tweak your nose,
To put some acid on your thigh,
To place ammonia in your eye.

Hubbard didn’t show the way
We were to hold you down today
And so we squeezed a bit too much
We should have used a lighter touch.

And when we put you back to rest
(Until your next sadistic test)
Oh, only then it came to light
We must have held you awfully tight.

For (and we’re sorry, truly sad)
Your little leg looked really bad.
It seems in one unlucky stroke
Your tiny, fragile leg we broke.

There is no justice on this earth
There seems no reason for your birth
That you should have to suffer so
Your life to be just filled with woe.

We never meant it, never guessed.
We only had in mind the best.
O frog, forgive, I beg of you
The stupid things we humans do.

My guess is that the last line was inspired by Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” with which I also was already familiar when I wrote this poem: What fools these mortals be.

[NOTE: I don’t recall being the one to actually hold the frog and break its leg. But if I didn’t hold it, then I must have been the one to pinch its eye and poke its toes, etc. etc. and so forth. After this happened, I never again helped out a lab partner. In college biology lab—where it was required that we do dissections, although only on dead creatures, including a frog, a fetal pig, and a shark’s head—I was very fortunate to be paired with a dear friend who loved doing those dissections and didn’t at all mind doing them by herself. I let her do it, watched, and gave her moral support. Actually I’m not sure about the latter; I could barely stomach that lab, which was held right before dinner.]