Dammit, Now It's My Turn ***Updated***

West Hollywood Resident Refuses to Take Down Sarah Palin Effigy

The mannequin is dressed in brunet wig, glasses and a red business suit. Another mannequin dressed as John McCain emerges from a flaming chimney.

Chad Michael Morisette, who lives in the house, told CBS 2 News that drivers and bus passengers have been stopping to snap pictures of the macabre scene.

Morisette says the effigy would be out of bounds at any other time of year, but it's within the spirit of Halloween.

It's creepy rather than funny, it doesn't help, the dude should listen to the community and take the damn thing down, and fast. On the plus side, one of his neighbors has put up an effigy of HIM, which is a message I can support.

***Update*** Dude took Palin down, though he left McCain in the chimney. (Hat tip to WAMK. It's make nice with WAMK day here at KIRY)

The Inevitable Icy-cold Hand of the Reaper

Look, I'll miss Gerald Ford. But we all go. You want proof? The guy who wrote his obituary for the Washington Post has been dead himself since last January. Given the way the system works, I fully expected to see his own byline on his obituary, but the credit goes to Adam Bernstein who was alive at the time of publication. Allegedly.

Hat tip to Wonkette, who tips a hat to Matt Drudge. I refuse to tip my hat directly to Matt Drudge, if for no other reason than his superior taste in hats.

You know how it works, right? The newspapers keep obit files on all news makers who are expected to die, so they can have a fully-researched article ready to go. When Frank Sinatra died, it probably freed up a tremendous amount of file space. Bob Hope? Spring cleaning. I bet people found half a dozen earrings at the bottom of drawers when Reagan shuffled off.

Ford was an okay guy, especially when you compare him to the current Republican president. At least he did no serious damage. That's all it takes to look good nowadays.

Night Of The Living Dems

Again, I get my best ideas from WHERE ARE MY KEYS, a rightwing blog on Townhall.com. Yesterday they posted a link to this article, which cites a study that suggests that dead registered voters tend to be Democrats in a 4-1 ratio. "Perhaps this is why Democrats oppose voter registration cards" the blog snarked. I replied thus:
Democrats oppose the cards because they cost money - they literally force the poor to pay to vote. Hmmmmm, who do the poor generally vote for?
As far as the zombie voting block goes, you probably shouldn't worry about them. It's a pretty small number according to the article, which cites a study performed by the publisher of the article. 77,000 out of 11.7 million! Assuming the ratios are correct, a fifth of that number (about 15,400) will shamble into the the polling place, vote Republican, and eat the brains of volunteers.
The zombie Democrats will take up the slack for black voters who are denied access due to clerical errors, or shortages of polling machines. And don't forget that many zombies this year will be voting on unreliable Diebold machines, which tend to make errors favoring Republican candidates.
Finally that ratio - it doesn't indicate voter fraud, it indicates the registered Democratic dead vs Republican dead, because the numbers were taken from a New York sampling. Registered dead voters in the midwest will skew Republican. In fact, the article states that no incidents of fraud were found in the course of their research. Don't fear the dead. Fear Joe Lieberman. He's crushing your Republican candidate in Vermont!

An American Halloween Tail

This weekend provided an unexpected glimpse into what horror movies are all about. Part of the story involves a plumbing emergency.
About a week ago today one of our toilets started backing up, again. We called a plumbing company, big, name brand, and arranged to have some guys show up on Saturday. We knew it was going to cost at least $800 and probably $2000, because there would be digging involved.
So Saturday morning, about 3 hours late, we got a call from the dispatcher asking if we wouldn't mind rescheduling on Sunday. We insisted that we would, in fact, mind. And an hour later (or half an hour after they said) a couple of men arrived. One scrambled on the roof, to operate the endoscopy camera. It's not really an endoscopy but the term is descriptive enough.
No, it's not scary yet.
So we locked the dogs in our pool area, to keep them from annoying the plumbers and escaping through the side gate.
After a few hours the plumbers told us they were going to have to saw through the concrete outside our bedroom, dig a hole and cut into the pipe, and install a clear-out access point. They would come out at nine on Sunday. It would probably cost 2k.
Still not the scary part. Don't worry, it's coming.
So about 10:45am, the plumbers arrived and started jackhammering our back yard. The dogs, locked in the pool area, were circling around the pool, barking at the neighbors, the usual stuff. Lobo, the dumb-as-a-post shepherd, started digging under the shrubs abutting the garage.
The plumbers stopped. We have a three-inch pipe, not the four-inch that they thought, and they'd need different tools. They'd go to the shop, pick them up (if they were there) and finish up later that day.
Here it comes.
While the plumbers were gone, we let the dogs out from the pool area, and lobo immediately started digging into a hole under the pool steps. It was apparently connected to the hole on the other side of the fence that he had been working earlier. I started hearing little squeals. Lobo kept thrusting his paw deep into the hole.
It was then that I noticed a cute, pink little baby mouse, screaming his tiny pointy head off; wriggling in the dirt just under Lobo. But only for a second, because in the next instant the mouse was trapped within Dogulous' powerful jaws. Still screaming like David "Al" Hedison in THE FLY.
Ellen came out the back door and I managed to divert her attention before she saw Dogulous with a tail and a leg wiggling around the front of her mouth. And before the next little baby mouse met the exact same fate. And the third. It appears that Lobo was pulling them out of the nest and Dogulous was taking care of the spoils. The Living Spoils.
It was like a miniature Darfur.
Look, I know this kind of thing goes on all the time in the back yard, usually at night. I just haven't ever been around to SEE it. Now I can't look Dogulous in her big brown eyes without seeing that tail whipping around, just before sliding down her throat, where the hapless mouse will meet his brothers and sisters just before stomach acids mercifully end their brief marsupial lives. I tell ya, I'm going to need therapy.
Oh, and reportedly the plumbers are finishing up the job this afternoon.