My Index

Chance that a British man admits to fantasizing about stealing my food during sex: 1 in 9

Rank of Glenn Beck among the nation's largest individual landowners who tortured and killed all those dogs, according to Beck: 1

Estimated amount that Jeff Beck has spent on guitar strings during his lifetime, according to Beck: $11,000

Percentage change since 2005 in the worldwide price of Purina Friskies Salmon Dinner, as tracked by The Economist: +77

Factor by which the price of meat by-products, poultry by-products, ash, guar gum, tricalcium phosphate, copper sulfate, and pyridoxine hydrochloride has increased in the past year alone: 2

Percentage of U.S. veterinarians who say they have a responsibility to confess their unmitigable sins: 95

Percentage of these veterinarians who have witnessed cats placed on the same chromium examination tables as dogs and failed to report it: 46

Chance that Bill O'Reilly will not go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless he is 100% positive she hates America: 5 in 6

Percentage of cats in Chicago's Rogers Park neighborhood who are "very" or "extremely" willing to watch the cat across the street lick himself in the window: 61

Percentage of cats in Samarra who are: 0

List XIX

Lions loggy with Circe's tisane.

That cat talks with a Greek inflection. And with the tone of bird talk the sun goes into shadow.

Tiber, dark with the cloak, wet cat gleaming in patches.

From Val Cabrere were two miles of roofs to San Bertrand so that a cat not need set foot in the road where now is an inn.

And a cat sat there licking itself and then stepped over the Principe.

In fact, that is the cat in the woodshed.

Desolate is the roof where the cat sat, desolate is the iron rail that he walked and the corner post whence he greeted the sunrise.

When the cat walked the top bar of the railing.

Her cell is drawn by ten leopards -- O lynx, guard my vineyard as the grape swells under vine leaf!

Unexpected excellent sausage, the smell of mint, Ladro the night cat.

As the Bestiary Turns

Scooter, Rummy, Nino and the Vice-President are waiting when the medics wheel the Constitution in. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act hurries into the room, too. Brit Hume repeats, "She has to be fine," over and over.

Scooter drags him from the room. Nino tells Brit Hume that habeas corpus must have a blood test because of the time it spent abandoned in the woods. Brit Hume returns and the Vice-President tells him the Constitution is stabilized for now. Nino touches the left thigh of Alberto Gonzales, who shows him Mara Liasson's files. The Vice-President asks about the Centers for Disease Control and learns they haven't returned Fred Barnes's calls yet.

The Vice-President returns to the Constitution.

Mort Kondracke walks up and Dana Perino tells him that the CDC is still not on the way. Brit Hume asks if he can do anything and Mort Kondracke tells him to get Michael Savage to the hospital quickly. Brit Hume goes off.

Mort Kondracke then turns to Karen Hughes and tells her the hospital is going to need blood -- and lots of it -- to make sure the Constitution's condition doesn't improve. John Boehner defends Brit Hume's desire to give the telecommunication companies immunity. Nino tries calling Karen Hughes several times but she doesn't answer her phone.

The Dog Upstairs Detects Movement and Weak Electrical Currents

The dog was not surprised that he saw a god roiling at his door.

The only difference between the past and present is this, just a window and nothing more. A ledge to sit upon, a street below to watch; a window and nothing more.

The gurgling dog opened the door a little more. He said, "I am your most humble and obedient servant, and where would we go?"

To the sand, filthy mutt, where I can bury you up to your doughy neck and walk away. To the sand, that's where.

A smoggy rolling in the air. The dog raised his paw as if to breathe. He saw himself slapped by me and wincing, his dark tail twittering between his legs.

Was he not out of his body, this trembling, subservient dog, his wet snout hand-fabricated from marine-grade fiberglass?

To the sand, mutt. A dog is winsome, a puzzle for a human being to look down upon. A snout I slap (roiling at the door). A snout elongated and flexible, covered in sensory pores that detect movement and weak electrical currents. Just like that.

Just like that, but this was all in his head, the dog. Nothing for that tiny cottage in a dog's skull. A brain small and pointed like a shrew's, more rounded than a ghost-shark snout.

The Vatican vs. Gertrude Stein (Part XII)

THE VATICAN: These dangers -- namely, the confounding of license with liberty, the passion for discussing and pouring contempt upon any possible subject, the assumed right to hold whatever opinions one pleases upon any subject and to set them forth in print to the world -- have so wrapped minds in darkness that there is now a greater need of the Church's teaching office than ever before, lest people become unmindful both of conscience and of duty. Did not your country, the United States, derive the beginnings both of faith and of culture from the children of religious families? And even at the present time wherever religious families are found, how speedy and yet how fruitful a harvest of good works do they not bring forth! How very many leave home and seek strange lands to impart the truth of the gospel and to widen the bounds of civilization; and this they do with the greatest cheerfulness amid manifold dangers! Nor should any difference of praise be made between those who follow the active state of life and those others who, charmed with solitude, give themselves to prayer and bodily mortification. From the foregoing it is manifest that we are not able to give approval to those views which, in their collective sense, are called by some "Americanism."

GERTRUDE STEIN: There is no pope.