Who are we kidding here? I had pet mice as a teenager, mostly because it made my mother insane. I had a little white hamster, too, and let me tell you, when Igor stuffed his little pouches full of violets, it was adorable. But he fit into my palm. He was an (ahem) domesticated little rodent, as were my little lab mice.

We are now watching as a new health epidemic sweeps our nation. Monkeypox, a "mild form of smallpox". And I for one would like to know if that's anything at all like a mild case of pregnancy... But I digress.

Where did monkeypox come from? From a batch of prairie dogs that caught it from a Giant African Pouched Rat, while they were all hanging around in Phil's Pocket Pets of Villa Park, Ill., waiting to be sold as pets. Which begs the question, who fucking keeps prairie dogs as pets? And why? They are large, cute rodents known to carry the plague. Hey! As Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up. Prairie dogs carry the bubonic plague. Yeah, great fucking pet. For your ex-husband maybe, but do you really want to give one to the kids? And they have teeth. Big old rodent teeth. And they can, as they say so euphemistically on the exotic pet web site, "inflict a deep painful bite." Uh-huh. Right.

Which brings me to the Giant African Pouched Rat, a species of which I was blissfully unaware until this week. Here is what the R-zu-2-U web site has to say on the subject:

"Giant African Pouched Rats, also called Gambian Pouched Rats (Cricetomys gambianus) are HUGE! The body length can be as much as 10 - 17 inches long from head to base of tail! Their tail is about the same length again or longer. These rats weigh from 2 to 6+ lb. Is this big enough for you?

They have an absolutely adorable face, actually rather comical and whimsical in appearance. If you like rodents, they are sure to captivate you in a heartbeat!"

Or not. A six pound rat is my idea of a living urban legend nightmare, not a pet. I can understand a snake, even one of those ridiculously large boa constrictors, if you are so inclined, but a SIX-POUND rat?

Once again, I find myself asking the eternal question: What is wrong with you people? Am I the only sane person on the planet?

Jun 9, 9:40 am ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Add "The Shoe Murder" to the chronicles of New York's crimes of passion.
A stormy relationship ended up on a Brooklyn street in the early hours of Saturday when a 220 pound woman sat on her ex-boyfriend's chest and clubbed him to death with her size 12 high heeled shoe, police said.

Anna Rhinehart, 40, told authorities she attacked Roosevelt Bonds, 51, in self-defense after he punched her in the mouth, knocking out her two front teeth.

The passionate struggle to the death began at 3 a.m. Saturday when Bonds saw Rhinehart at a restaurant with another man, police said.

"There was a dispute between them and the man was struck in the head and body with a blunt instrument," police spokeswoman Det. Carolyn Chew said.

Rhinehart was charged with manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon. "It was her shoe," Det. Chew said.


Man, I love the city.

My little corner of the web has been noticed. Shucks, gee, I'd like to thank the academy. Or for the movie buffs out there, "You like me, you really like me."

Yesterday I was the Day Trip du jour (is that redundant?) over at WomanChild's blog. I didn't even know until I received a fan e-mail. I just can't wait to see the web stats on Monday when the reports get run. Gosh, I might be up over 6 visitors a day!

Speaking of movie buffs, my husband, my father and I caught the last half of the AFI special, the 100 top villains and heroes. It says something about the family that between the three of us, we could A) Identify almost every clip before the title was announced and B) Deliver the line that was the "famous" line before or concurrent with the actor and C) Make some off the cuff, sarcastic, yet brilliantly humorous mot for each.

I went to film school (yeah, right. I minored in film at the liberal arts college I attended. But many famous filmmakers and actors also attended that same school, so in my book that makes it film school. In any event, I can still format a script correctly and I still remember the differences between pan, dolly, tilt, zoom.) but my father and husband have no excuse for this aberrant behavior. Needless to say, we had a wonderful time.

"I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody. Instead of a bum. Which is what I am."

He sure is, says dad. Amen, says I.

I don't know exactly what it is about the immediate future and/or minimal amounts of progress that so terrifies so many people, but there are more and more examples of this sort of Luddite behavior around me.

I have, in the recent past, written of my neighborhood and my neighbors' insistence that things remain the way they were 35 years ago when the area was just being developed. In this instance, that means my neighbors do not want city water and sewer lines coming through the neighborhood. They do not want any new housing to be built, except what looks like what's already there. They do not want to see so much as another family move in because they are already unhappy with the traffic in the surrounding 5 blocks.

They refuse to accept the fact that the neighborhood is bordered by two major roadways, which intersect, in fact, at the corner of our street. Nor do they wish to acknowledge that there will be a light rail system built along the north/south artery within the decade. They hounded the state to designate the east/west roadway an historic roadway, thereby preventing it ever being widened, and now they go to zoning hearings and bitch that the east/west road is always backed up at least three traffic lights because it can't handle the amount of traffic on it.

Today I heard from a friend about the dilemma at her sailing club. The city owns the property the club sits on. The city owns the building in which the club is housed. The city owns the basin in which the sailboats are moored. The lease is expiring on all of this and the city wants the club out. Period. The response by the sailors of the club? Let's go down to City Hall and show them the photos from our archives and talk about the past. Let's hire lawyers to fight city hall. (No, they really said that.) Let's force the city to renew our lease. Let's not even look at other possible moorings. Let's get up on our hind legs and complain that nobody respects middle class white people anymore.

Luddites or mere idiots, you decide.

I received this joke today, and it isn't funny, it is sad. So sad, that I thought about putting it up on my political blog. Then I decided that this is not political in nature, merely a take on corporate stupidity. That fits here. So without further ado, I present to you The Joke:

An American automobile company and a Japanese auto company decided to have a competitive boat race on the Detroit River. Both teams practiced hard and long to reach their peak performance. On the big day, they were as ready as they could be.

The Japanese team won by a mile.

Afterwards, the American team became discouraged by the loss and their morale sagged. Corporate management decided that the reason for the crushing defeat had to be found. A Continuous Measurable Improvement Team of "Executives" was set up to investigate the problem and to recommend appropriate corrective action.

Their conclusion: The problem was that the Japanese team had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, whereas the American team had 1 person rowing and 8 people steering. The American Corporate Steering Committee immediately hired a consulting firm to do a study on the management structure.

After some time and billions of dollars, the consulting firm concluded that "too many people were steering and not enough rowing." To prevent losing to the Japanese again next year, the management structure was changed to "4 Steering Managers, 3 Area Steering Managers, and 1 Staff Steering Manager" and a new performance system for the person rowing the boat to give more incentive to work harder and become a six sigma performer. "We must give him empowerment and enrichment." That ought to do it.

The next year the Japanese team won by two miles.

The American Corporation laid off the rower for poor performance, sold all of the paddles, cancelled all capital investments for new equipment, halted development of a new canoe, awarded high performance awards to the consulting firm, and distributed the money saved as bonuses to the senior executives.

Last week I received 189 e-mails from concerned citizens. They were concerned about a story that was in the national news, and my hospital's web address and e-mail were aired on national right-wing, conservative and Christian radio stations. There was a young woman about to receive a court-sanctioned abortion at this institution and these people were most concerned with the fetus's right to life.

It was a form letter they sent (and many more were sent to other administrators and departments, I just received the 189 sent to the webmaster) so every e-mail was the same. This is a child that could be adopted. This is a life which is sacred. For the love of God, do not destroy this life.

One hundred and eighty-nine people said that SOMEONE would want to adopt this child. Not one offered to be that someone. Not one offered to pay the money to attempt to save a non-viable fetus in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for as long as it took. Not one person offered to pay to support this life, if, by chance, we were able to use our most expensive medical means to get this life out of the NICU.

And not one of those 189 people offered up a single opinion about the value of the life of the mother in question. She is a severely mentally disabled, physically disabled young woman who was raped while in a group home for people with those sorts of disabilities. Probably by one of her caregivers. The pregnancy caused her to have multiple, painful brain seizures. Her doctors all testified as to the danger of her carrying the child to term. She was able to understand that and make her wishes about this known. "My baby no more," were her exact words.

So if life begins at conception, and is valuable enough to protect prior to birth, at what point does life become expendable? When it starts to breathe on its own, outside the womb? (In my religion, we are taught that that's when life begins: when one takes one's first breath... because Adam wasn't alive until God gave him breath.) When it turns out to be a female life? If it turns out to be a less-than-perfect person? Because what those 189 people were saying was that the mother's life wasn't worth saving, only the potential life she held within her.