I got an email today.
  As some of you know, I used to work in talk radio. I got an email today from the host of the talk show for which I used to produce, asking me what I though of the whole Rush Limbaugh thing. Here's what I said.

  My view on Rush is pretty simple. I don't think he's a racist. I think he's an elitist, but that opinion was cemented a long time ago. In fact, I believe him when he claims that he wasn't knocking McNabb as much as the media coverage and the fact that McNabb is so highly rated.
  The thing is, I don't agree that McNabb is overrated because he's black. I think he's just overrated. I don't have any love for the media in terms of its sophistication or its objectivity, but can you honestly tell me there aren't any white quarterbacks who aren't performing to the level that they were expected to reach?
  I heard something on NPR that really struck home for me. It would have been very easy for Rush to say that he thinks the media has overrated McNabb. Rush made a conscious decision to focus on a claim that his race as the reason, thus making it a racial issue. It was either pigheaded and insensitive, or deliberately provocative, and I'm really not sure which way is better. And his claim that the uproar he's caused somehow proves that he said something true is completely baseless. I get upset when Neo-Nazis claim that the Holocaust never happened, or when creationists claim that the Second law of Thermodynamics rules out evolution, or when conspiracy nuts claim that the black, featureless backgrounds in the pictures taken by the Apollo crews prove that the moon landings were staged, but my outrage doesn't make them right.

  Before you start, I used to produce our rebroadcast of Rush's show five days a week, so I have listened to him. I'm not relying solely on what I've heard about his comments. While I agree with him about as often as I shit golden statues of the Dalai Lama, I respect his ability to find and hold an audience. Frankly, I believe that his reluctance to ever admit that he could be even the slightest bit wrong has a lot to do with how popular he is. He simply powers ahead, and his confidence and self-assurance are attractive. People like someone who sounds as if he believes in himself, and Rush seems to possess the kind of self confidence that would have made Jesus Christ feel like a bit of a charlatan. So I'm not surprised that he hasn't tried to diffuse his comments beyond apologizing for the discomfort he caused the ESPN crew. His show would probably drop in the ratings if he appeared to be wavering or backing down. Still, I can't help but wonder exactly how the man sleeps at night.
  Wait a minute. I'll bet he sleeps on piles and piles of money. *sigh*

It's official...
  In this month's Journal of the American Mofo, I am listed among the top ten laziest mofos of all time. No, seriously, it's true!
  Okay, so there is no JAM, at least not yet. I'm trying to teach myself Flash, so there may be one at some point. If there were such a publication, I'd certainly be on their lazy list. I was off for two days, and I didn't leave the apartment for something like 36 hours. I only left to take a bag of trash over to a dumpster across the street. I stayed in my pajamas all day on Tuesday. I am a lazy, lazy mofo.
  In my defense, I did do some things while I was inside. I applied for some jobs, and I started trying to teach myself to use Flash. I also swept and emptied the trash. But I still feel like a special kind of slack ass for hanging around in my pajamas all day.
  Truth be told, it's not entirely my fault. My landlord decided to have the sidewalk in front of the apartment torn up and replaced. So, there was a one hundred square foot plot of wet cement outside my door for the majority of the day, which would have made leaving kind of a pain. (There's a funny story about how Amy had to have one of the workers carry her piggyback across the wet cement when she left for work, but I'm probably not supposed to tell you about that.) It probably would have been nice if my landlord had warned us that out sidewalk was being replaced, but that would have been considerate, and thus completely out of character. Some day, I will not live in the ghetto, with a crackhead for a landlord.

I'm kitty-sitting.
  The Barrymore is about one and a half, and Charlatan is around a half, so neither of them are kittens in that "Look, she fits my shoe! And in that saucer! And in the fold-up couch! Hey, where'd the kitten go?" sort of way. Still, they are young enough that they get pretty rambunctious. Putting a paper bag on the floor is a quick way of sentencing it to death, and anything that rattles or rolls on the floor will get batted around until it gets stuck under the couch.
  It's all hunting, really. They get some exercise, and it's much better than stumbling over headless rodents they've deposited on our doorstep. Still, it sometimes gets a bit scary when they run out of toys. If there's nothing worth batting about, they'll start harrassing each other. I've been assured by two sets of experienced cat-owning parents and someone at our vet's office that this is natural. The consensus seems to be that, as long as they aren't actually clawing each other, then they're just playing a little rough, and it's fine. Still, I can't help but be concerned when they're wrapped around each other, hissing or yowling like they're trying to kill each other. So I find myself compelled to drop whatever I'm doing and go distract them when they start to get too hostile.
  I do mean whatever I'm doing. Eating, web-surfing, sleeping. I'm supposed to go to the grocery store while Amy's at work, and I've been reluctant to leave them alone. They are certainly as cute as drastically mismatched buttons, but I won't be disappointed when they're old enough to be as lazy as I am.