Gator vs. Cop, Man vs. the State

I think this May 3 animal-related news item has a certain rustic charm – and interesting legal fallout:

10-foot gator chomps on Fla. deputy's cruiser

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) — A 10-foot-long alligator has taken a bite out of a Florida deputy sheriff's cruiser...near the Gainesville Golf and Country Club...[T]he car's front bumper was heavily damaged...[T]he alligator was put down under the state's nuisance gator policy.  Under that policy, the trapper is allowed to keep meat and hide from the gator.

I feel I keep hearing contradictory things about whether alligators are dangerous, so I’m going to err on the side of avoiding them (unless I have this cat with me, of course).

But where does libertarian Democrat Dan O’Connor, who is running for U.S. Congress from New York City’s Chinatown/Williamsburg/etc. district, stand on a national gator policy?  Where does he stand on attacking police cars?  These questions and more YOU CAN ASK HIM TOMORROW (MON.) NIGHT BY JOINING US AT LANGAN’S BAR-RESTAURANT (47th just east of 7th), 7-10pm, at the monthly Manhattans Project social gathering.

Cat Upside-Down Atop Door Licking Tail

I count at least three reasons this cat behavior is odd.

Chewie Raps, Granny Cares, Dinos Fight, Canada Mellows

•Chewbacca raps: "Let a Wookiee Win."

•In other geek news, tonight's the two-hour Smallville finale, after ten (mediocre) years.  I like the fact the show makes Anti-Life apostle Granny Goodness (seen throughout the second half of this clip) seem aggressively grandmotherly instead of like Jack Kirby in armor (while also in drag), the way she does in the comics. 

And I have to admit they even improved on Grant Morrison's improvement of the basic rationale for that set of seemingly-random Jack Kirby villains, making them a trinity of evil heralds for Darkseid afflicting mind, body, and spirit, respectively: Granny Goodness, DeSaad, and Glorious Godfrey (which they make a point of pronouncing like "God-free").  But will this Friday the 13th evening see the usually light show display even a moment of the kind of vicious, sadistic, almost Lovecraftian darkness Morrison gave these villains in Final Crisis?

•Speaking of Morrison improving on Kirby, Morrison's new movie project sounds like the closest thing the world's yet seen to a movie version of Kirby's Devil Dinosaur, one of my childhood favorites.

•On the topic of childhood influences: the more I meet like-minded semi-Canadians such as fellow libertarian Tricia Summers (celebrating a birthday tomorrow), the more I think we New Englanders -- and Pacific Northwesterners -- aren't just secular and mellow, I think we're de facto Canadians, superficial political differences aside.  Sometimes region matters more.  So I really should stop picking on Canada, especially with the merger coming and all.

I took a break from my "Week of Cats" entries today, but tomorrow I'll finish with a truly strange cat feat (aw, cat feet!).

Cat Parkour

Here’s a (fake) cat doing parkour (the building-leaping “free running” used in so many action movies in recent years).  Here, aside from a few seconds of that ad, are cases of real cat parkour.  

Once, I might have looked to my friends who do urban exploration, such as the authors of Invisible Frontier, in hopes of finding people willing to learn parkour, but the post-9/11 world – even now that it’s post-bin Laden – is not a hospitable place in which to pull urban exploration stunts, as a few people learned just the other day. 

But then, PiecesofFlair founder Meredith Kapushion says she watched a live parkour demonstration once and spent much of the time marveling at the injury rate and thinking, “That shouldn’t bend that way.”  Today, on International Nurses Day, let us be grateful there are people to pick up the pieces. 

Tomorrow: Chewbacca.

Keyboard Cat, Hensel Twins, Neutral Milk Hotel, and God

•I am no animal welfare radical, but I have to say Keyboard Cat never looked very happy or gently-handled to me.  However, the song itself, I think, is funny – as is this (presumably consenting) human reenacting the famed clip and this still a bit violent-looking – but cuter – dog doing it.

•Also cute in a weird way: the astonishing so-called “two-headed girl,” actually the independent-minded but necessarily highly cooperative Hensel twins.

•They are not to be confused with Neutral Milk Hotel’s 1998 song “Two-Headed Boy,” which strikes me as being the sort of song that the stiffer Guided by Voices should have been doing but wasn’t quite.  More important, it strikes me in hindsight that the song is a pretty good choice for the position of “missing link between 90s grunge-type-stuff and 00s affected-folk-indie stuff,” though it’s a bit scarier than either.

•Conjoined Christian twins plus an organ-playing cat naturally remind me of this point:

When some say the media are too secular, I take it they don’t have in mind things like the Times piece about the (currently #1 bestselling!) book Heaven Is Real, a piece that features not one skeptical question about a child’s claims that while unconscious he visited Heaven (awww!)...a story it took the child years after the “fact” to fully formulate...years of having a preacher for a father, oddly enough.  Nope, the Times just uncritically repeats the family’s claims that it's a mystery where the kid could have gotten his notions about Heaven at so young an age.  So, gosh, they must be true.  America, you are a nation of imbeciles.

Intellectual maturity means being able to contemplate complexity (and doubt) without anxiety, and that means combining skepticism with the realization that neither biology nor the economy requires a central planner.  Anarchism and atheism should be as widespread as common sense – which ought to be common. 

P.S. If I offend anyone with that comment, he cannot become the first person to unfriend me on Facebook – I think someone beat you to it yesterday, and there is no built-in way to know who (though there is non-retroactive ’ware out there).  Believe it or not, I honestly can’t think of anyone I’ve offended lately.  (Maybe I’d better take things up a notch.  I trust the fledgling list will continue to grow.)

Maru the Cat (plus Revisionist Hasidic War History)

I do not say this lightly: This thirty-six-second clip is my favorite animal video of all time.  Maru, the cat in the video, lives in Japan, and the song heard is “Angel of Death” by Slayer, about German concentration camps.  If there were an Italian angle, we’d have quite the Axis of Cat Comedy.  Maru strikes me as more punk-rock than fascist, though.  Go, Maru, go!

I know it sounds like a made-up number, but according to Maru’s Wikipedia page, his videos have been viewed 90 million times.  If Maru had just ten cents for each of those hits, he would by now be able to afford most excellent super giant cat food bowl of especial delicacies!  Regardless, I am pleased by his success.

Speaking of the Jews and war: you thought I was exaggerating when I referred to Brooklyn’s hipster-Hasidim war in my entry Saturday, but this article shows how seriously unhip the Hasidim can be (sympathetic though I generally am to traditionalism): The Hasidic newspaper Der Zeitung photoshopped Hillary Clinton (and another female) out of the photo of Obama and company in the situation room during the bin Laden raid.  Women shouldn’t be mingling with men, apparently, and so…now they apparently aren’t.  You’d think Hasidim would know better than most people the dangers of revisionist history. 

I wonder if the ease with which they faked this has made any of the newspaper staff more likely to be birthers – or “deathers,” now that (right on cue) there are people out there who won’t believe bin Laden’s dead until we see the photo.  For the trifecta, might there be someone out there who thinks (1) bin Laden is alive and a fake raid on him was watched by (2) a Kenyan-born president who (3) was not accompanied by any women at the time?

The lies go so deep, Mr. Mulder (no, actually, they don’t – the world’s as boring and stupid as it appears to be, I’m afraid). 

Mortal Cat, Immortal Tricksters

A “Week of Cats” within my “Month of Animals” is clearly necessary, and we begin with a link tweeted on April Fool’s Day by Nathan Fillion.

Speaking of tricksters – in myth, Odin was an even worse one than Loki, according to this assistant prof who, I will have you know, is an expert on folklore and ancient mythology (here contrasting the movie Thor with the mythological one – and with the drunken liars who surrounded Thor in those myths, no formula for a healthy parent-child relationship and not a reliable way to forge a hero).

And to compensate for the fact that this is largely a month of stupid video clips of animal doing silly things, here’s a relatively noble and serious item: a cat who needs your help to afford his rabies quarantine (who was tweeted about by Mary Katharine Ham, a.k.a. the funny political reporter who first posted a clip of my C-SPAN2 appearance last year).  The fundraising drive ends Saturday!

Tomorrow on this blog, though: quite simply the greatest cat video of all time, in my opinion.  Don’t miss it.

Bear vs. Bear

One last bear clip before turning to cats for the rest of this week: two minutes and fourteen seconds of two grizzlies fighting!

Mom likes both bears (the stuffed kind) and cats (the real kind), by the way, so this is a fitting entry for this special day.

Bears’ “Gonn-ads,” Maus, and More

Here’s an ACSH video I noted before with the Xtra Normal bears talking about paranoia about their “gonn-ads” being affected by chemicals (90 sec.).  I believe a staffer who co-wrote that went on to work at Murdoch’s Daily, so you see how ACSH can be a launching pad for hot media careers.

Meanwhile, mice – or rather Maus – is used to discuss the serious issue of Holocaust today at an event going on at this very moment about the practice of Holocaust Remembrance, at which Art Spiegelman appears and my fellow Brown alum Tim Snyder will boldly lecture about how ritualized remembrance can sometimes hinder the investigation required for serious scholarship (holding the event this past Sunday, Holocaust Remembrance Day, might have seemed more fitting – but then they couldn’t talk about bin Laden’s death, a wrinkle worth throwing into the conversation).

As long as I’ve veered back into politics, though, here’s something more my speed: Read this comparison of Reaganomics to Obamanomics by Peter Ferrara.  (No econ vs. econ, though, on this blog tomorrow: instead, it’ll be bear vs. bear!)

I must skip the Snyder talk due to a prior engagement in Williamsburg, but I will think of the eternal hipster-Hasidim war while I’m there.  By tradition, being in Williamsburg on Saturday helps compensate for the considerable hipness points I lost by spending last night watching Smallville and tweeting at libertarians about Thor.  It's a purity thing.

Gorillas, Bear, and Bigfoot

What could be more pulp/comics-like than yesterday’s epic Book Selections entry?  How about this?

•Footage of a gorilla fighting a gorilla!

•Footage of Bigfoot fighting a bear!

Bigfoot is ostensibly man-like (or at least ape-like, or monkey-like or whatever), but remember that real conflict between Man and non-human animal rarely looks like that phony Bigfoot/bear battle.  As this article noted by Kelly Jane Torrance reminds us, too often in the real world Man’s war with Nature takes the form of a guy arrested for stabbing a goat while high on bath salts and wearing a bra and panties (sort of sounds like a scene from the Book of Genesis, reviewed in that same blog entry from yesterday I mentioned earlier).

Since this entry has been a tad unscientific, I’ll compensate with an animal video tomorrow from one of my former employers, the American Council on Science and Health. 

Book Selections of the Month: Pray for Mjolnir (comics, movies, more)

It’s the National Day of Prayer (and Cinco de Mayo), and this week that means praying to the Norse god Thor, or at least attending the movie about the Marvel Comics version of him (join me in the lobby of the AMC 34th/8th Sunday at 4:30, ticket in hand, if you want to join me for the 5:30 show) and using the occasion as another excuse to talk about comics.  Mayhem, mayhap?

I am suspicious of anyone reluctant to celebrate heroes and the downfall of villains, which is why I think this gentleman on his ATV may be a much healthier celebrant of the Bin Laden take-down than some of my anti-interventionist and pacifistic acquaintances, despite what some might see as his lack of nuance.  (And don’t assume that al Qaeda members themselves are responding with renewed determination – this one’s already turned himself in, as sometime-war-poet Gregg Glory points out.) 

And Borat’s cousin – whose book on sociopaths and other empathy-lackers I’ll examine with fresh interest in the topic in August – might agree with me that there is something psychologically inhuman about indifference to the triumph of good over evil, even if indifference can make for sound scientific reasoning and, oddly enough, good comedy – as I’ll discuss in my June Book Selections entry, on Daniel Dennett, James Thurber, and related matters.  (By contrast, looks like about half of those self-reported birthers weren’t so crazy-stubborn after all.)

The “end of evil,” as David Frum once put it, may not be a realistic goal, but it is unnatural not to desire it, shameful not to pursue it. 

But enough science and psychology (unless you want to check out this periodical table of appearances by chemicals in comic book stories): on to a list of interesting comics (and related items, ten texts in all) so interesting I had to make exceptions over the past year to my avoidance of comics and read them.  I hope you’ll agree it sounds like I’ve gotten very choosy (and I’ll dedicate it all to Jackie “Perry White” Cooper, whose recent passing was noted by Jacob Levy – and occurs a mere week before the Smallville finale).

•••

For real heroism, look to people such as the libertarian eulogized here by Jeffrey Friedman (who managed to be laissez-faire while still addressing problems like laid-off coal miners).  For unreal heroism, look to comics and sci-fi – but note the increasingly blurry line between these forms of reality and unreality, with self-proclaimed superheroes working to protect people on Long Island from a serial killer and even film directors such as the one slated to do the sequel to Taken giving themselves monikers like Olivier Megaton (he’s French). 

I.  In the beginning, there was the Book of Genesis

There Is Little That Is Permanent, but There Is a Bear and a Moose

I’ve noted before that it pleases me that ninety-seven year-old Grandma, who is still with us, was born before World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution, the creation of the Nazi Party, the completion of the Panama Canal, and the founding of Saudi Arabia.  Part of being conservative (in a good sense) should be recognizing that many things that pretend to be ancient or permanent are in fact recently-concocted fads soon to be exploded.  Recognizing how short-lived some seemingly-huge historical phenomena such as the Nazis and the USSR really were can help put things in perspective. 

And now Grandma has seen Bin Laden come and go.  She may yet outlive al Qaeda. 

Perhaps people’s revulsion at that group’s religiosity will also hasten the death of the false notion – treated as a timeless truth by the Cold War right and still believed by some – that religion is essential for the protection of the U.S. and Western civilization.  Just the fact that some conservatives keep mouthing that idea while, with the next breath, saying our current greatest foe is a band of religious fanatics is a reminder that people don’t choose to think too carefully about these formulations once they take on even the thinnest veneer of “time-honored wisdom.” 

Things change.  Until the moment they do, we are often told that the current situation is not only likely to prove permanent but is, in some deeper sense, the way things have always been (though Europe was still ruled by monarchical dynasties when Grandma was born, etc., etc.), and furthermore that our intellectual options are (alas!) very limited, usually to only two items (us or them, religion or immorality, government or mass starvation, etc.). 

Just be aware that when you say with a confidence born of timeless wisdom that religion is essential to public morals – or that government programs must be maintained if the poor are to get ahead – you may be saying so in words devised by a PR person as recently as 1973.  Lack of awareness of history (and thus change) creates a false sense of permanence.

And now, in honor of Grandma – and all who dwell in New Hampshire, whether they’ve been there a mere four months or are Seaveys who’ve been there a mere four centuries (that being only four times Grandma’s lifetime, keep in mind) – here is footage (from somewhere) of a bear hauling a moose carcass across a driveway.  

Baby Monkey, Obese Hedgehog, and More by Parry Gripp

We begin my “Month of Animals” entries with a bang, or rather with Parry Gripp, performer of simple, TMBG-like ditties that describe, usually in very literal, simple terms, stupid video clips from YouTube.  What a good and necessary idea.  Behold, then:

“Baby Monkey (Going Backwards on a Pig)”

“Chimpanzee Riding a Segway”

“Overweight Hedgehog” (complete with a glimpse of the very real St. Tiggywinkles wildlife hospital)

and three cat-oriented ones:

the very strange “Spaghetti Cat (I Weep for You)” (the title photo having famously been used as a baffling filler image during a morning TV show broadcast)

the artful “Pile of Kittens (in My Mind)” (perhaps their most artful – despite the disappointment of the video containing only one kitten, and not even the hamster promised by the lyrics; this one’s worthy of a New Wave band, which should perhaps make me rethink New Wave)

“Cat Yawning”

Of course, vegans, unlike utilitarians, know how to take the fun out of everything, so I’ve already been told that the baby monkey is probably gripping (no pun intended) the pig due to having lost its mother at a too-early age, but there’ll be more animal-exploiting fun ahead to compensate for that downer.  Next week: lots more cats, but this week: BEARS (good prep for Brown Reunion on the 27th-29th if perchance you’ll be there).

Rand, Me, Animals, Vegans, and Blog Comments

Yesterday was a great blow against a living embodiment of coercion, which comes in forms other than the state, we must remember.  It's all right for everyone from Democrats to Republicans to libertarians to be on the same side in thinking that.  

On Facebook (where coincidentally, some of you will now see a photo of me with perhaps the most fiercely antiwar person I've met, Dan McCarthy from American Conservative), I said in a comment just the other day that Hayek and Keynes, though they did not rap together in real life, did perform watch duty together, keeping an eye out for Nazi bombers over London -- and even our fiercest economic disagreements are trivial compared to our disagreement with homicidal evils like the Nazis and al Qaeda.

But tonight at 6pm is nonetheless an NYU debate between liberal Ezra Klein and Objectivist John Allison.   And speaking of Rand...

This article almost makes it sound as though my friend Kyle Smith is the only reason for the beleaguered producer of the Rand films to carry on and make Parts II and III of Atlas Shrugged.

You know, by my crude calculations, only around 300,000 people saw the Atlas Shrugged movie -- about half the number who watched a YouTube clip from my C-SPAN2 appearance when it first appeared last year.  If I had only foreseen that, I would have said more about the importance of property rights or something.

And I think COMMENTS THREAD PROBLEMS ON THIS BLOG HAVE BEEN RESOLVED, so you can even post your own version of Galt's speech, if indeed you are inspired by any of the entries I post during this "Month of Animals" on the blog, which I admit will mostly just be stupid cat clips and the like -- but really good ones, so keep watching. 

Maybe some vegans will start an interesting debate or something.  They know better than anyone that the Internet is for porn for video clips of silly animals.

Instead of Celebrating May Day Today…

…consider attending a debate on the question "Is Capitalism Moral?" tomorrow 6pm at NYU: Objectivist John Allison vs. liberal Washington Post writer Ezra Klein.

I'm going but for the rest of May largely laying off the politics and the sci-fi/comics nerd stuff -- not to mention Twitter and Facebook -- in favor of, yes, just posting links to goofy animal videos on this blog (though I'll still see Thor and host Manhattans Project at Langan's on the 16th).  That should free up some much-needed time for matters both professional and personal.  But they'll be really good animal videos and will segue neatly back into matters more philosophical in June, so KEEP READING THIS BLOG DAILY throughout my "Month of Animals."

The most liberating political news of the past few days, though, may be Mitch Daniels pushing through a big school choice plan in Indiana (we may be hearing a great deal more about him soon).  Another step forward.