Yes, this is is my very first dKos diary. Be gentle with me.
Disclaimer: Today's Cheers and Jeers is in no way affiliated with Bill in Portland Maine. Any resemblance to Bill in Portland Maine's Cheers and Jeers is entirely plagiaristic. I mean, coincidental. Shut up.
Cheers to BiPM for churning out four of these every week, and cheers to the subs who keep the snarkage going when Bill's off "working".
Shall we hop into the kiddie pool? (Careful, my plantar fasciitis is acting up. Ouch.) Yes, boys and girls, there's more.....
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, April 6, 2006, from mostly-cloudy Seattle, Washington
On this day in (American) history...
1830: Joseph Smith digs up *cough* some tablets in his backyard and founds the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. 124 years later, L. Ron Hubbard decides that this is a pretty darn good business model. Your reading assignment: The Book of Mormon and Dianetics.
1917: The United States declares war on Germany and enters World War I. Your reading assignment: All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque.
1930: Hostess invents the Twinkie, thereby spawning a brand new field of scientific inquiry and giving mentally unstable right-wingnut fundies everywhere an ingenious criminal defense strategy. Not to mention launching Dianne Feinstein's career in national politics. Bonus! Your reading assignment: Execution of Justice by Emily Mann.
If you were born on April 6, you share your birthday with such luminaries as Butch Cassidy (1866) and Merle Haggard (1937). I leave it to you to decide if there's a theme there.
If you die(d) on April 6, you share your deathday with Isaac Asimov (1992), Wendy O. Williams (1998), and Tammy Wynette (1998). Wouldn't the three of them make an ass-kicking cast in a production of No Exit? Your reading assignment: No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre.
Cheers to soapboxes; I'm about to climb onto one, so fasten your seatbelts.
Your Thursday By the Numbers, courtesy of the American Humane Association:
Estimated number of operating animal shelters in the US: About 3,500
Estimated number of pets entering US shelters each year: About 15 million
Estimated number of pets killed each year due to shelter overcrowding, illness/injury and/or "unadoptability": About 9 million
Estimated percentage of dogs entering shelters that end up being killed: 56%
Estimated percentage of cats entering shelters that end up being killed: 71%
The #1 reason people give for abandoning their dogs at shelters: Moving
The #1 reason people give for abandoning their cats at shelters: Too many in house
Number of times I've had to restrain myself from reaming these people a new orifice or three while volunteering at my local shelter: Too numerous to count
Your puppy/pootie pic du jour: Do NOT click on this if you're unwilling to face the reality of what happens to most animals that end up in shelters. Consider yourself warned.
Your inspirational quote of the day:
We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals . . . We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth. -- Henry Beston (1888-1968), American writer
Your reading assignment:
The Outermost House by Henry Beston.
Cheers to the legislature and governor of the great state of Maine, for enacting the first law in the country that protects the pets of abuse victims. (And props to SheriffBart for diarying about it on Sunday.)
Digressive jeers to me, for using "diary" as a verb. GAH.
MegaCheers to every single one of the shelters that do their level best to find homes for the millions of homeless animals in this country. It's heartbreaking work, and the people who do it are heroes. Shout-outs to some of the people I admire the most: the good folks at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab, Utah (with special appreciation for the tireless work they've done in the Gulf Coast since Hurricane Katrina); Pasado's Safe Haven in Sultan, Washington, an animal sanctuary that also does amazing work in the field of animal welfare advocacy in this state; and Black Beauty Ranch, a sanctuary in eastern Texas operated by The Fund for Animals. Your reading assignment: Black Beauty by Anna Sewell.
Okay, climbing down from the soapbox and moving on to matters political:
Cheers to Truthout, one of the best websites evah, IMHO. Some highly recommended (by me) reads:
Thom Hartmann on immigration
Sidney Blumenthal on Tom DeLay
John Dean on George W. Bush
The Presidential Powers Debate
Cheers to Project Censored, who've been fighting the good fight for a free press for 30 years. Another recommended read: Their top 25 censored stories of 2006 (so far).
Cheers to grassroots activism -- Dan Savage style, that is. Your reading assignment (aside from the Savage Love archives, you pervs): Skipping Towards Gomorrah by Dan Savage.
Jeers to Senator Lindsey Graham, who when questioning John Dean in last Friday's Judiciary Committee hearing on NSA wiretapping, proved himself to be as dumb as he looks. Extra-credit jeers to Senators Hatch and (especially) Cornyn just for being giant oozing pustulent assholes. Your reading assignment: Worse than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush by John Dean and All the President's Men by Woodward and Bernstein.
I know this got front-paged already, but I just cannot resist a razzberry-flavored jeer to the lovebirds. Tweet, tweet. Your reading assignment: Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx.
More digressive jeers to me, for using "front-paged" as a verb. Double GAH.
On to matters non-political:
Cheers to tulips, my favorite flower -- the official harbinger of spring taking over from our ghastly Pacific Northwest winters. Cheers to Washington's own Skagit Valley, a major bulb-growing region, and cheers to their annual Tulip Festival. I'm making my annual pilgrimage in ten days to soak up the color and add to my refrigerator magnet collection. Oh, and to see if I can get a glimpse of the snow geese on their annual migration, too. Some pics from my last pilgrimage:
Field of daffodils
Field of snow geese w/ Mount Baker in the background
Red Emperor tulips
Cheers to an "insignificant and journalistic" cockroach named archy who, with his friend mehitabel the alley cat, debuted in Don Marquis' New York Sun column exactly 90 years and one week ago on March 29, 1916. From certain maxims of archy:
if you get gloomy just
take an hour off and sit
and think how
much better this world
is than hell
of course it won t cheer
you up much if
you expect to go there
Your reading assignment:
archy and mehitabel by Don Marquis
Finally, because I just gotta do it:
Cheers to Ambrose Bierce. Your Devil's Dictionary definition du jour is the one that was my favorite when I was a young kid, just beginning to have my mind warped by my unfettered access to my mother's book collection:
HIPPOGRIFF, n.
An animal (now extinct) which was half horse and half griffin. The griffin was itself a compound creature, half lion and half eagle. The hippogriff was actually, therefore, a one-quarter eagle, which is two dollars and fifty cents in gold. The study of zoology is full of surprises.
Your reading assignment:
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce (you thought I was going to assign
The Devil's Dictionary, didn't you? Bwahahahaha.)
So what are you cheering and jeering about today?