The beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad, so I had one more for dessert

I have a cat. She irritates me. But then, I irritate her as well.

It’s a love/hate thing. I feed her; she loves me. She wakes me up at 5am; I hate her. I come home and snuggle her; I love her. I chase her around the house trying to poke her in the bum; she hates me.

It’s a symbiosis. And that symbiosis means that whenever I’m sitting at my computer, she wedges herself between my back and the chair’s back. The result is this:

Yes. She’s wearing mittens.

Eventually, I grow tired of her pushing her feet into my ass, and I retreat to the couch with my laptop. She stares, though. She knows victory is hers.

And in a few hours time, it will be hers again, when she jumps on my bed to proclaim, at 5am, that it is indeed time for her to eat.

I want a Delorean

If any of you are still trying to think of what you should get me for Christmas this year, the answer is very simple: a Delorean equipped with a Flux Capacitor. I want to go forward in time to about 2015 (I know, not very far), buy a Sports Almanac, then come back to 1955 and bet on the outcomes of all the games in history, thereby increasing my wealth to the point where I can own all of Hill Valley.

All of this is just meant to introduce this fantastic diagram, created by the Buddhist monks at the New Shelton Wet/Dry. It clearly shows the timelines involved in the entire Back to the Future series. And it looks hot.

Why you should care about CIA renditions

From a story at Salon.com on a man who was held captive by the CIA for 19 months, not charged, and suddenly released with no reason given:

Bashmilah’s story also appears to show in clear terms that he was an innocent man. After 19 months of imprisonment and torment at the hands of the CIA, the agency released him with no explanation, just as he had been imprisoned in the first place. He faced no terrorism charges. He was given no lawyer. He saw no judge. He was simply released, his life shattered.

“This really shows the human impact of this program and that lives are ruined by the CIA rendition program,” said Margaret Satterthwaite, an attorney for Bashmilah and a professor at the New York University School of Law. “It is about psychological torture and the experience of being disappeared.”

Everyone on the planet should care about this because, as proven by this man’s story, rendition could happen to anyone. You don’t have to have done anything, and one day you could be scooped up, not to be seen again for years.

This is coming to you…

I’m not even sure what to post. I just clicked “write post.” And here we are.

How about this: things that have figured big in my week—a list in no particular order

• Fish
• Michael Jackson
• Red wine
• Adam Sandler
• Not cleaning
• Being late for work
• Not going to bed at a reasonable hour
• Drinking
• Free food
• Mini Eggs
• Art Blakey’s “Moanin’”
• Excel & VLOOKUPs
• RIM & their Blackberry devices
• Procrastination

That, friends, is all.