And it comes out

Sorry I jumped to blame the victim, but it appears I was right.

Okay, so the wall was four feet shorter than the AZA recommendations state. It still took 60 years for someone to be obnoxious enough to annoy the tiger into jumping out.

Here's where the zoo is really culpable: these three guys apparently drunkenly roamed the zoo taunting animals conspicuously enough for zoo guests to report it, for some amount of time, without security throwing them out. But once again, it was Christmas day, and I imagine they were short staffed.

When someone dies for a stupid reason, there's enough blame to go around for everyone.

Noticing the year: 01/17/08

Not that this should have been a revelation, but it was. I noticed African Wild Dogs smell like dogs.

Noticing the year: 01/18/08

Forgive me, but I wanted today's weather to be worse. It snowed for some short time during the night, and then switched over to rain for the morning. The morning was fairy miserable, for those of us walking around in puddles on ice with insufficiently waterproof boots. But at the moment it is glorious. In January in Boston, a sunny day in the high 30s feels like as good as we can hope for. You want to throw your gloves away and leave your coat forever unzipped.

Nasty weather would make next week's vacation all the more sweeter. But the forecaster assure us that nasty will be the order of the day on Sunday and Monday, so at least I have that.

Vote for Gordon Weir!

Presidential campaigns are full of unrealistic insincere promises uttered by cynical Machiavellians for the purpose of manipulating the fickle and the gullible. My favorite of these, possibly of all time, is that of my good friend and former co-publisher of a reactionary art school "newspaper" Gordon Weir. I'm not supporting his campaign's ideas merely because he has access to information, documents, and probably photographs for all I know of my misspent youth and its deeds which have left me permanently unelectable to any office with more responsibility than carrying round-ended scissors. No, I heartily and passionately endorse these ideas because of their timeliness, their reflection of my moral beliefs, and the fact they are superior to any ideas espoused by the other candidates, with the possible exception of the Ron Paul/Dennis Kucinich plan to develop cyborg warrior/sexbots to fulfill the nation's future needs for warriors and unfettered sex.

I speak of course of terraforming Mars and stocking it with cloned dinosaurs.

you guys

My favorite thing about my blog is the comments. I'm proud that I've cultivated a readership that is intelligent, thoughtful, passionate, reasonable, tolerant, irreverent, knowledgeable, and funny. I'm very happy to belong to a community of adults who have similar interests and different opinions, and the ability to express them with insight, humor, and respect. People who leave because they're offended, well, that's too bad. People who leave because they're bored, well, that's my bad.

So then, which is more controversial: people eating cats, or cats eating people?