Cable modems are great, when the FUCKING WORK. As you can probably guess, mine still isn't. A tech will be coming at between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. tomorrow. I'm glad they're able to come so quickly, but for god's sake, wouldn't it be easier if they would just FIX IT AND KEEP IT WORKING?!!? <Deep cleansing breath> Thank god of NetZero.

Now. On to the rest of my life. I'm continuing with the odd productive streak in my life, and I don't know exactly what's up with that. Hmmm. Finished cleaning out the back porch (minus the fridge, as that's more than I can lift on my own) and got rid of the Last Recepticle of Stray Cat Piss, the icky carpet remnant. Then I took one hell of a long shower. Blech.

I'm trying not to spend much, if any, money this month (saving it all for Australia next month, mate!), but it doesn't matter, because TNN had their Star Trek:The Next Generation marathon on this week. Bliss. So how's this for monster geek cred: I spent last night with episode after episode of Next Gen, two cats, a bottle of really nice Italian Chardonay and mac and cheese. What more need I ask out of life?

One of the episodes that was on last night was the one where Wesley comes back from Star Fleet Academy all pissy teenager, realizes that this isn't what he wants to do with his life, and goes off with The Traveller. Now, I've been as guilty of Wesley bashing as anyone else -- he was sort of the Ewoks of Star Trek, poor thing -- so it was kind of good to see him acting like an actual teenager. <Side note> As I recall, all the other kids on Next Gen -- Worf's Alexander, O'Brien's kid -- got to act like brats at random intervals, so you could believe they were real kids.</Side note> Wesley was just too good, and a potential messiah or something to boot. I bet Jesus and Allah got beaten up on the playground a lot, too. (Am I going to hell for saying that?)

But all that reflexive "Oops! Accident while Wesley was cleaning the photon torpedo snigger, snigger, snigger" crap is over for me, because I started reading wilwheaton.net. Have you seen it yet? Wesely may have been a little goody-goody, <Side note> Like I fucking wasn't growing up. I think part of my participating in the Wesley bashing was to separate myself from that past. Wow. Well that's one issue that won't have to come up in therapy. </Side Note> but Wil Wheaton seems pretty damn cool. Check it out, especially the bits about Trek conventions and WILLIAM FUCKING SHATNER.

I wonder if Wheaton has a copy of the infamous Shatner rendition of Rocket Man? Hmmmm. Now that would be something he should put on his site....

OK, follow-up on yesterday's post about the potential penis in the fruit juice: The Smoking Gun has the actual police report about the incident in question. And good news! According to the folks at TSG, the objectin questions was not a rude-severed body art at all, but instead, ulp, "bacterial growth mold." Somehow, that doesn't make me feel better, just a whole new variety of ill. I mean, a 3-inch segment of bacterial growth mold? < retch >

Again, the cable modem at home is down. Grr. Harumph.

So, Important Announcement -- Happy Birthday Ex from Northern Ireland! He's 32 today, and apparently a bit sensative about it, poor wee thing. Birthdays are fun. They're a good thing. I'm sorry your car chose this day to die -- crappy birthday present. But otherwise, all is well, right?

(By the way, am I being paranoid in no longer refering to you by name? Let me know what you prefer.)

So, other stuff: As if we needed any more evidence, I can definitivly state that Firefighters kick serious butt. My <Yuppiescum alert> trainer </Yuppiesum alert> at the gym is a Chicago firefighter, and he and a bunch of his fellow firefolks took their vacation time to fly out to New York to help at the World Trade site. He was helping to get rid of debris and recover bodies. He said fires are still burning all over the site, and the focus has moved to clearing the site as quickly as possible to ward off the possibility of disease. He described pulling away rubble to find something he knew was human remains, but not being able to tell even what part of the body it was from. This is what countless firefighters and police officers and rescue workers are doing in their off time -- on vacation. Jesus.

But what really struck me was what he said about the New York firefighters. I was afraid that since all the firefighters were at the World Trade site, if anything in, say, upper Manhatten or Brooklyn caught fire, no one would be around to respond to it. That's not how it works. What has happened is the NYFD has moved to a 24-hours-on/48-hours-off schedule. So these guys are working 24-hour-days, and, instead of going home and seeing their families or resting or whatever, on their two days off, they're going down to the World Trade site and doing relief work. They're moving bits of building, taking remains to the morgue, surrounding themselves with the death and destruction and horror for two days straight, sleeping at the site so they can do as much work as possible ... then going beack to the firehouse to fight fires that may occur anywhere else in the city. Damn. I'm in awe of them.

So, to the NYFD and to Brian Stack of the Chicago fire department and all the other rescue workers and doctors and firefighters and.... everyone... Thank you. You're amazing, and the fact that you exist helps restore my faith in humanity.

Right, Buffy premiere last night. Huzzah! Good, if very, very grim, episode, and I can see things are going to get interesting. Thanks to Michelle for having me and Wendy over, so we could watch and yell at the screen.

Random bits:

A truly disturbing story -- Man finds human penis in bottle of fruit punch -- Police don't know if crime is involved This took place near Denver, and I had the following e-mail conversation with my friend Rob out there:

Subject: RE: What the hell is going on out there?
Huh?!?! Hold on....
[zzzzipppp]
Whew.

"Don't know if crime is involved"? Um, my guess: It is. Ewwwwwwwww.

And we were grossed out the other day to find worms in the rice. It's
all in your perspective, I guess.

-Rob.

Glad to hear that you're not missing anything. And yeah, the rice thing doesn't sound so bad now.

Other news: My friend Lotti told me that her friend "Sgt. Ed Richards, one of Chicago's finest, " (i.e., he's a cop), was flagged down by a couple of tourists from Iowa at Navy Pier last week. Seems they'd spotted Osama Bin Laden driving a cab, and they wanted him arrested immediately. Sigh.

More random links: Check out this collection of screen shots from news sites on September 11. It's a pretty amazing collection of how we reacted when the news was just coming out about what happened.

I've been unaccountably productive today. I have no idea what's wrong with me. I guess it's that the weather's gorgeous and sloth seems a bit ... wrong. Or something. But anyway, I cleaned out most of the back porch (still the cat-piss-soaked carpet remnants, some moving boxes, and oh yeah, the fridge to go -- I'll wait til the next garbage day for them, I think) and cleaned out the guest closet (which, until now, I had barred with an army trunk to discourage guests from actually opening, as it was chock-full of stuff). Plus, I measured both closets so I can put in new hanging rods, as one is useless and the other could be much better at the moment. Now, I'm going to go through old files and shred things (shredding! Yay!) as I really don't need my HongKong Shanghai bank statements from 1993.

Who am I, and what have I done with Sarah?

I've been reading buckets this week. Bliss! Nights are cool and getting dark early, so curling up on the couch with books and cats has been way cool.

Side note -- the cats have been very very clingy these last few days. I can't sit down without Mongo tackling me and headbutting me til I scratch his ears. If I start to take my hand away, he pins to to the sofa until I start scratching his ears again. Bug is slightly less obnoxious about it, but she's living up to her full name: Bug Underfoot. (Mongo's full name is Mongo Couchweight, which also suits him admirably). I think they're letting me know that they don't necessarily approve of houseguests. Sorry, kitties -- suck it up.

Anyway, books:

Lives of the Monster Dogs : A Novel by Kirsten Bakis -- Really good, and really horrifying to think about. A madman at the end of the 19th centuy is spurned by humans, and decides to make the perfect race of soldiers from dogs -- intelligent, loyal, obidient, vicious, all the rest. His followers finally create these "Monster Dogs," but things don't work out quite as they planned. The Monster Dogs were compelling and horrifying -- they were more intelligent than most people, and knew what had been done to them, plus they could see that they didn't have a future, as no one was around to create any more of them. How were they supposed to live in this world? Reviewers compared it to Frankenstein, and I can see the parallels. Check it out.

The Parrot's Lament and Other True Tales of Animal Intrigue, Intelligence and Ingenuity by Eugene Linden -- Interestingly, one of the things the Monster Dogs talked about was the trauma of knowing that they were dogs. Real dogs, they said, didn't think about their lot in life, they just were. They didn't have the same sort of consciousness as humans, or much self-awareness at all. Linden disputes that -- not with dogs, specifically, but with "higher mammals" -- apes, orangutangs, chimps, dolphins and orcas, parrots, pigs, and cats (Hah! Take THAT, dog people!) A science writer for Time, National Geographic and other magazines, Linden has written a couple of books on apes and laguage -- you know, Koko the gorilla and Washoe the chimp learning American Sign Language, etc. He isn't getting into the science here so much as presenting anecdotal evidence that hey, these creatures communicate, lie, have a sense of humor, trust, recognize their place within a heirarchy, use tools, and generally know a lot more than we give them credit for. Fascinating, as Spock would say.

The Cat Who Covered the World : The Adventures of Henrietta and Her Foreign Correspondent by Christopher S. Wren -- OK, I'm a sucker for well-written cat books. This isn't your standard treacly "My cat is the sweetest" story, though: Wren was a foreign correspondent and bureau chief for The New York Times in Moscow, Cairo, Beijing, Ottowa and Johannesburg, and Henrietta went along for the ride. So there's some pretty amazing detail on what it was like to try to feed a cat in Breshnev-era Moscow (hint: lots of salmon and caviar, if you can believe it), how to get kitty litter in Beijing (not easy), and what birds you should not attack in South Africa. Very cool. I kept looking at my cats as I read this, mentally trying out overseas life with them. Mongo seemed to know what I was thinking, and did not take it kindly. I'm thinking I'm sticking around here for a while.