Great video — I especially love the paintsplosive finale!

A couple of weeks ago, a whiner-cry baby by the name of Joe Stack was apparently so distraught that the Federal Government wasn’t going to allow him to cheat on his taxes anymore, that he jumped into a plane and flew it straight into an IRS office, killing a government worker named Vernon Hunter. Before doing this, he apparently scared the crap out of his wife (she was living in a hotel), and then torched his house.

A lot of people applauded his actions as “heroic”: while I agree that he might not be a terrorist* (added emphasis on the “might”), there is nothing “heroic” about his actions or conduct. Essentially, the “hero” line of argument goes as this: “Government is big and bad and people who resist the government’s might and/or kill the agents of the government are heroic.”**

Apparently, especially so when they’re homicidal terroristic arsonists.

So, flash-forward to Pittsburgh, last week.

Those of us who live in the Mid-Atlantic area have been buried under snow since roughly the beginning of the month. Anyone who has survived a snow storm in Baltimore or DC (or apparently Pittsburgh) can comment on the notion of “reserving one’s space.” Basically, what happens is this: it snows. Your car is buried. You dig it out. But fearful of being unable to find a place to park said car when you return (because most street parking is lost to mounds of snow), you place a piece of furniture in the spot to indicate that it is “yours.”

Technically, this is illegally. Practically, however, it is not enforced. (Not that I’ve ever seen).

So there’s this guy, TRUE STORY!, who goes outside to clear his lady’s car of snow, and apparently moved it at some point. A gentleman by the name of Errol Parker then parked in the space (how could he do this if the dude’s lady’s car hadn’t been moved?), and when the snow-clearing guy asked him, “Hey, buddy, can you move your car?”, Parker punched him in the face, and then pulled a gun. So obviously, having been assaulted and threatened with a deadly weapon (look, I’m as pro-gun as you can expect a liberal to be: but when you punch someone and pull a gun, you’re clearly indicating, “Hey, for my next trick, I’m going to shoot you.”), the victim called 911.

Parker’s back in his home by this point, and when the police entered, Parker came at them with the gun. They exchanged gunfire, Parker got tasered, no one was seriously hurt, and all of this …

… over a parking space.

Er, I mean, “Over a person’s right to keep the government from telling him where he might or might not park his car.”

But I guess he’s not a hero because Rep. Steve King’s never had a ticket maid’s “thumb in the middle of [his] back.”

Funny story: Interestingly, a few days after the snow storm, Neighbors A. and B. dug out their cars. Both drove elsewhere. Another car appeared, and took neighbor A’s spot. Neighbor A returned, and parked in B’s spot. The third car left, and Neighbor B. returned and parked in A’s spot, because B.’s spot was taken by neighbor’s A. car. Apparently, both were upset that someone else had claimed their space, and over the course of the evening, I watched as both car owners came out of the building with pitchers of water and poured it on the other’s car. I would’ve yelled at them, but a.) I’m six stories up, and opening my windows during the winter I don’t do and b.) I didn’t know what apartments they live in, so I coudn’t go and explain the situation.

*Although I have to honest, I’m considerable more in the “Terrorist” then “Not Terrorist” camp. Anyway, Newsweek had a very interesting inter-office e-mail debate on who qualified as being defined as a “terrorist”, they eventually posted it to their website, and it’s a truly fascinating read, but I would suggest this as an epilogue.

**Let me tell you: as a retail employee who has to enforce the local DC’s government bag tax, this kind of scares me, especially when some right-wing TV pundit scowls when I ask, “Would you like a bag? It’ll be five cents.” I mean, technically speaking, the conduct of charging for bags makes me an agent of the government’s will, yes? (Then again, so does adding the 6% tax charge to the purchase).

Here’s how not to get yourself a job in the Bookstore:

1. Stay in the store ten minutes after we’ve closed talking up everyone about how much you’d like to work here, somehow failing to notice that the “Ma’am, will you please leave?” has become “Please get the fuck out.”

2. Come to the Information Desk with a list of 150 authors and the request that I track down every single book by every single author and find the publisher’s address. Okay, two things: A.) We’re not a reference library. And B.) This is why Al Gore invented the internet, don’t you know what a wonderful modern world we live in?

I had a health scare last week.

Not for me, for little Tippy, the youngest of my two cats. She’s a domestic short hair calico, a temperamental nine-and-a-half-pound fleabag who’ll rub up your leg for attention one moment, and hiss at you the next.

For the last several weeks, I’d been noticing an increase of cat vomit about my apartment. I cleaned it up to the best of my ability, chalked it up to whatever brand of food I was buying at the time, and crossed my fingers that the next brand I selected would ease whichever cat’s stomach wasn’t agreeing with what I was feeding them. And then early last week, I was home when I heard Tippy howl.

Cat owners know that cats can vocally express themselves several different ways: they can meow, that nice little polite “meow”, or they can whine, “mrrrrowl”, or they can even scream — as my older cat, Guy, did when he jumped off the bed … or rather, tried to jump off the bed, as his front paw was stuck in the afghan. Scream-scream. Like, “holy crap!”

But none of this compared to Tippy’s howl, which made me jump. And immediately after howling, she threw up: twice. But after that, she seemed recovered quite well, so I didn’t think a whole lot about it. I cleaned up the mess, I poured some cold water into the cat bowl, but it wasn’t until the following night — when she howled again — that I began to get scared.

I moved to DC almost two years ago. Both cats were up to date on their shots when I moved, so finding a new veterinarian wasn’t a priority. And as they’re both very healthy cats, I really didn’t give it much thought, until Tippy’s howling. I immediately went on Twitter and solicited vet recommendations. And pretty quickly, both on Twitter and Facebook, people responded.

Ultimately, based on a Twittersation with @Shaw_Girl (who blogs here), I opted to go with Dupont Veterinary Clinic, located on P Street just west of Dupont Circle. I called them Tuesday morning, and was able to arrange an appointment for that evening. While I considered taking Tippy on public transport, I ultimately decided to take a cab to and from. Truthfully, when transporting them by vehicle before, they’ve always cried and howled the whole way — I didn’t want to subject an L4 full of people to an upset cat. And while getting her into the cat carrier involved a considerable amount of effort — !!!!! — I was able to flag down a cab pretty easily.*

But that was later that day — after I’d been at work all day, after I’d gotten home and forced the cat into the carrier. Meanwhile, I spent all day googling “cat symptoms vomiting” and many of them were worst-case: “Cat dying.” You can possibly imagine how worried and scared I was feeling. And sick.

Also — wow! Was Tippy a good traveler! There was no hissing, and this little beast was eyes wide examining the world I take for granted. Sadly, no cute women told me what a cute cat she was, but she was a tiny little thing in a big blue box with bars.

We got to the vet’s without incident, and yes, I did tip the cabby quite well: I gave him $10 for a trip from Woodley Park to Dupont, and I think the meter fee was $6 or $7. We also got to the vet’s early, so I had a few minutes to wait, which was fine, because I had some forms to fill out.

In any case, before too long, a woman with pink dreadlocks took us into an exam room, where she had to coax Tippy out of the carrier which, considering how much the damn cat didn’t want to get in it in the first place, she was surprisingly reluctant to leave. But once out, she strutted her stuff and was quite happy and purring and getting scratched and loving it all …

… right up to the point she got stuck with the rectal thermometer, at which point her disposition went from “Excited! Curiosity run amok!” to “I’m gonna kill you both. Hiss.”

Not long after, Dr. Mitterman came into the exam room and used a stethoscope on the cat. Hoo-boy. Even though I don’t think the doc did any sort of anal probing, Tippy wasn’t much happier about being poked and prodded. Fortunately, Mitterman’s verdict was that Tippy was a pretty healthy cat, and wanted to do some bloodwork (to find out if perhaps she had kidney disease, or thyroid problems) and take some X-Rays (to see if something was physically wrong with her). I was totally all about those checks, so Tippy got loaded back into the cat carrier and taken upstairs and I waited in the lobby screwing around on my iPhone for a few minutes.

With X-Rays in hand, Mitterman summoned me back to the same exam room, and she pronounced Tippy in pretty good health (depending on how the bloodwork came back). She’d been concerned that perhaps the cat had swallowed some string which was causing her digestive troubles, but to be truthfully honest, once she said Tippy was in good health, I retreated to cat-lover’s-paradise and was just there long enough to miss the actual diagnosis.

Long story short, I left the clinic with Tippy in one hand (in her carrier); and a prescription bag of cat food in the other. In my coat pocket was a small jar of the feline version of Pepcid. Yep: Tippy had heartburn. Although I considered walking home, the truth is, I just wanted to get the cat out of the carrier so I could play with her. So I hailed a cab, and a few minutes later (after almost running over some pedestrians), we were home.

And Guy, poor cat, who was probably wondering what the hell was going on, jumped right off the bed and trotted over to greet Tippy as she emerged from the carrier.

And I’ve got claw marks up and down my arms, because every night I’ve got to load up this syringe/dropper thing with a certain amount of the stuff and shoot it into her mouth. She does not like it.

But she hasn’t thrown up for almost a week now.

***

The Clinic called me on Thursday. I’d provided both my cell and work numbers as contact. Because I’ve never set up the voicemail on my cell, Dr. Mitterman left a message for me on my office line (I’d already left for the day), to the gist of: “Bloodwork came back, she’s fine — no risk of thyroid or kidney disease.” This was a hallelujiah moment.

Tippy & Guy … Tippy’s not so happy about being disturbed. I like to call this the “she’s flicking me off” picture. Pawing me off?

I don’t quite know why she was so very still in this photo, or what she was looking at, but no, she was not stuffed.

In the carrier, enroute to the vet. This is either an expression of, “Why are you doing this to me?” or “I’m going to cut your throat.”

*True story: since moving to DC, I’ve taken a cab four times — once, when I was showing a friend around, and we wanted to get to the Zoo quicker than the Metro from downtown; once when visiting a friend out in Virginia, who lived a considerable hike from the Metro; and then twice more last week taking the cat to and from the Vets. This is probably a post in its own right, but long story short, I feel that they’re a waste of money. Take the bus, take the Metro, or walk. It’ll take you longer, but it won’t bite your wallet as much.