Ken Lee

Things I wasn’t expecting to do when I woke up today

Katya died at 3:45. Dr. Yaxley showed me the radiographs indicating that her kidneys were abnormal and had visible stones. After that, the only option was a surgery that she was not likely to come out of, given how far she had deteriorated even with supportive care, and an infection in her one remaining kidney. She was calm but clearly in pain. The clinic offered to send me a clay cast of her paw print, which was nice and not something I had expected. I signed her over for the clinic for research and instruction, so maybe she can help someone else’s cat. That’s all.

Katya

So this morning I came downstairs to head off to work and Katya was lying under the weight bench. I didn’t notice her at first, and I went into the kitchen to fill water bottles. On the way out, I noticed that she hadn’t moved and when I touched her, she didn’t respond. I picked her up and she was stiff, but made a little grunt. I knew she was dead, and that was just gas escaping when I moved her. I waved my hand in front of her face she didn’t respond; her eyes were half-open. As I was waving my hand one of her whiskers twitched, so I put her in the carrier and borrowed Carter’s car to take her to the MSU Small Animal Clinic. She made a few more little grunting sighs on the way, so I knew she was still alive but clearly struggling.
They determined that she was dehydrated, cold, and her blood sugar wasn’t high enough to read. They put her on a saline/dextrose IV under an electric blanket with an O₂ hood while I arranged a line of credit for treatment. Right now they’re trying to stabilize her and see if they can diagnose anything. They’re pretty sure she’s in renal failure, but they don’t know if it’s the cause or a symptom, with everything else going on. They will update me with her condition, but they said that “no news is good news”, I suppose because anything that happens immediately will likely be a crash. So, I’m waiting here to see what they call back with. I got to see her before I left and she was conscious and moving, so she’s reacting to the treatment. Something similar happened with Boris about 8 years ago, shallow breathing, not moving, and they couldn’t figure out what it was. Three days and $1.4k later, he was acting fine and he’s still living with Daniel and Anne. So, I guess there’s no way to know how it’ll turn out quite yet.

Update 14:41

The doctor just got back to me, and it doesn’t look good. Her blood volume and pressure are still low despite the fluid therapy and her blood sugar levels are still low despite the sugar IV. X-rays showed stones in both kidneys, which are not the right sizes (one large and probably failed, one small and working overtime). Even after surgery, a cat that produces kidney stones will continue to do so, and this one on one functional kidney. She apparently has not become any more responsive, either. I will be heading over there shortly to discuss the situation and options with the doctor. Sorry I don’t have better news, but I suspect she might not be coming home

I see racist people

Keith Olbermann is a big, stupid dumbshit.

No really, I can prove it.

Watch this video (McCain campaign advertisement). Count the penises. If you said “three”, then congratulations - you’re Keith Olbermann! Keith saw the Siegessäule victory column in Berlin, the Washington Monument, and the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and saw through the B.S. to the truth: they’re phallic symbols. On the other hand, if you only saw the Siegessäule, then you actually watched the video, because it is the only tower of any description in the video (no word on how John McCain managed to sneak the Siegessäule into Berlin to sabotage Obama’s appearance. In Berlin. In front of the Siegessäule.). Taking it further, John Alter fills in the other side of the equals sign: white wimmin.

Yes. And that‘s the oldest and deepest, you know, racist canard in American history, really, is that, you know, the slave is going to come after the wife of the plantation owner. I can‘t sort of dissect and decode these ads that way. I just, somehow maybe my media literacy is lacking. I didn‘t read that out of those ads. But I can see how some people would, and the larger issue, I think, is clear—which is they‘re trying to portray him as being uppity. Now, is that racist? I‘m not sure.

Or, in mathematical terms,

penis³ x 2(vapid white chicks) = scary Barack Obama = racism

I was wondering what that tickly feeling in my brain was when I watched McCain’s ad. Now I know. Back in the reptilian reaches of the hindmost part of my Polish/German New England immigrant heritage, I saw the ad, recognized the column, the (nonexistent) monument and the (invisible) tower, realized that it meant penis, saw the white chicks, and remembered a previous life when I was sitting on the verandah of my plantation in a white three-piece linen suit and a straw hat, sipping mint juleps and being terrified that Barack Obama was going to rape my wife.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA oh my fuck, Keith and Jon, you simian chucklefucks. Oh, you twisted muppetcunted shitwranglers. Don’t ever change, you dumb bastards. I need you guys around to think about every time I want to die a little inside. Do you see the world through penis-colored glasses or something? Holy living merciful fuck. Truly, we are living in amazing times. To think that two people could see one monument, turn it into three phallic symbols, and then leap to “the oldest and deepest, you know, racist canard in American history”, without the aid of heavy drugs and get paid to do so… stunning.

Q. Do some people think that the ‘liberal media’ is a conservative fabrication?
A. It’s true! Some people are all HURF DURF RUSH FAUX NEWS HURRR while two grown-up commentators are actively fellating Barack Obama live on MSNBC and they believe that this is “moderate”.
Ah, but it’s not just a campaign ad. Turns out, you literally cannot say word one about Our Lady of Hope and Change. No, really. As race-obsessed columnist Timothy Noah points out,

To be thin is to be different physically. Not that there’s anything wrong, mind you, with being a skinny person. But would you want your sister to marry one? Would you want a whole family of skinny people to move in next-door? “I won’t vote for any beanpole guy,” an “unnamed Clinton supporter” wrote on a Yahoo politics message board. My point is that any discussion of Obama’s “skinniness” and its impact on the typical American voter can’t avoid being interpreted as a coded discussion of race.

Congratulations, Democratic Party. You now have a candidate who is completely Teflon untouchable. Even remarking that he has what could be called an ectomorphic physique can be turned around on you as a vile attack on this honorable Afro-American post-racial man’s skin color, as though you’d spent twenty years listening to a bitter, paranoid, racist conspiracy theorist every week. What can we say about him? If I call him a very liberal Democrat, is ‘liberal Democrat’ really my super-secret code word for “black dudetransformative candidate”? The party anointed their candidate as “post-racial” and “unifying” and “transformative”, that he could cross racial lines - and now they literally Can Not Shut The Fuck Up About Race. Hypocrisy we can believe in.