This article is just another bit of strong evidence for the Islamic Regime of Iran's pathetic and swiftly deteoriating descent into complete paranoid schizophrenia: Newsweek: How I spent 4 months in an Iranian jail.  You have to read to appreciate.

They try to prove their goodness, their rightness, their legitimate rule by arresting, torturing, and killing people by the thousand... anyone who opposes them or they thing might oppose them.  Everyone is a spy out to destroy them in their eyes.

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.  They more they strike out in anger and fear at everyone, the more mentally unstable and thereby dangerous they are seen as being and the more likely to be forcibly removed.  All they have now is each other in infamy.  They hang together or they hang separately.  Either way, they further doom themselves with every violent, suppressive, and oppressive action they take.

Too bad.  So sad.  Good riddance to bad trash.  Out with the old, in with the new I always say.  The newest generation of Iranians deserve far better than their parents stuck them with.

This is Cloudy:

Yesterday evening, as usual for her when she's feeling like being sociable, she came to the door of her presently modular home and begged to come out and visit.  This is on the counter right next to my computer where I sat browsing about on Xanga.  So I opened the door for her and out she came.

These are earlier pictures of her coming out to visit taken about a month ago.  It's changed a little since then.  Right now, it looks like this, all decorated for Fall except for the Christmas tree I just added:

Note my mouse pad there.  I'll show you a close up later.  It became sort of prophetic.  Meanwhile, here's a closeup of that Christmas tree I was telling you about:

I just put it in there for her to get used to for now, but I plan on putting Cloudy with her wheel and tree and a cabin or igloo and playground equipment in a large terrarium full of white bedding (like snow) later this weekend.

So anyway, I hold out my hand and Cloudy happily climbs into it and up my arm to where my hair falls over her.  I nuzzle her fur and she nuzzles me back.  Her favorite thing in the world is just to cuddle.  She's that sweet.

Meanwhile, Jeb is playing video games in the living room and Andy has cooked some rigatoni that he and Bonnie are eating at the dining table you can see there behind the Christmas tree - Jeb and I still too full from the luncheon at work to join them - and Mooshu sitting on the floor between them looking up with adoring eyes...

...He's such a lovey dovey purr ball of a fluffy big-eyed cat. 

Cloudy is getting more and more active.  Bonnie finishes eating and takes her in hand for a while, making the reluctant Andy hold her as well.  She even rides on his shoulder for a while, but I can see she's restless to go into her exercise ball and have herself a good run about the house.  So I put her in her ball and Andy cries out that the Mooshu will probably harass her.  Bonnie and I don't agree though, and we're right.  Mooshu doesn't harass her.  If anything, she harasses Mooshu, chasing him around a bit while he keeps peering at the ball every time it stops, and then jumps back, startled, every time she starts rolling it again.

After she's gone all over the main floor of the house several times, I take her out and put her back into her little hamster home, thinking she'll be satisfied now.

She's not.  She's back at the door staring at me.  I reach in and pet her but don't let her out again.  She looks disappointed and goes up to her tower to sulk about it, peering at me through the dome, little hands up against the clear green plastic.  Finally, I lift the dome and take her out for some more cuddling before finally returning her to it, replacing the dome and heading off to bed with Jeb.

It's around 1 AM when Andy comes knocking on our door to say that Cloudy somehow escaped her cage and Mooshu had almost killed her.  He's got her trapped under a shoe box, but she's so upset he's afraid to touch her.

He told me that he'd been wakened from a dead sleep by her amazingly loud and piercing screams in the laundry room next door to his room downstairs.  Mooshu's apartment is attached to the laundry room and it sounded like he was having a ferocious fight with someone.  I imagine it started out looking pretty much like the picture on my mouse pad:

Cat face saying "What are YOU doing here little mousey person?  I eat little mousey persons for breakfast!" and little mousey person saying "Uh-oh, I'm in deep doo-do now!"

When Andy opened the door to the laundry room, he saw Cloudy in Mooshu's mouth screaming her little lungs out.

"Drop her right now," Andy orders him and, surprisingly, Mooshu immediately does so.  Less surprisingly, Cloudy takes off running like her fur is on fire.

She's jumpy and act like she might just bite for once (something she's never done) when Andy tries to grab her, so he gets a shoe box and drives her into a corner where he get it over her.  Mooshu helps him, just herding Cloudy, making no attempt to swat her with his paws.

The cover of the shoe box was placed over its bottom so that when I came down the stairs, all I saw was a shoe box and assumed she was already safely captured within.  Well she was, but not the way I thought.  Mooshu was locked back in the laundry room yet Andy, as soon as he lifted a weight of books off the box, still insisted on clamping it down with his hands.  "Lift the lid so I can pick her up," I said.

"Are you sure about that?" he asked.

"I'm sure."  Silly me.

He raised the box.  Cloudy, still upset, took a few erratic jumps about and would NOT let me pick her up; instead rushing off into the family room and ducking behind the oak television console in the corner.  The older television in that one is small so I was able to peer around it at her and saw, OMG, a little block of green rat poison in the corner there and Cloudy, trying to calm herself down, grooming herself not half an inch in front of it.  Jeb had put it there a few years ago when we first moved in and, being in an out of the way spot, we hadn't even thought of it again.  But the stuff is so deadly it has to be handled with rubber gloves.  It can be absorbed through the skin.  Andy peered around me and saw it too and we muttered, "Oh crap!" in stereo.

"Help me move the television," I asked him and he pushed me aside to take it out on his own.  Then I leaned in and tried reaching for Cloudy again.  She dodge my fingers again but at least she ran back out the way she'd come in instead of under the console or, worse, into the poison.

Andy put a large cardboard tube over her as she came out that tiny corner and I slipped a thin book under it so we could carry her up the stairs and back to her home safe and sound. 

Surprisingly, she was none the worse for wear.  No apparent injuries; no contact with the poisson she'd gotten so close to.  And as soon as we got back to her home I saw exactly how she'd gotten out: she'd pushed the green dome off, jumped down, and decided to take herself on a midnight walkabout, something she's probably wanted to do all her life and will probably (hopefully) never want to do again.

As soon as she saw she was in her tower again, she visible relaxed and let me pet her again, all her jitters gone.  I'm so glad she survived her big adventure!  She's such a delicate little thing and so incredibly dear!  I checked her when I got up this morning and again when I got home.  Andy kept checking her all day.  She's all right.  Just not very sociable today.  Maybe still too traumatized.  Poor little thing!  I hope she NEVER does that again.

This is all Roxics fault.  I hope he’s happy with himself.  I am a very suggestible person.  I can visualize things (well, not everything but many) with such clarity that it’s often disturbing.  Say the right (or wrong) thing and it can send my mind off on a tangent.

Don’t get me wrong.  Visualization has been a very handy tool for me for writing, spell casting, dream walking, lucid dreaming, empathy, planning, and outright escapism.  Really handy.  But sometimes it takes me off the garden path and out into the dark and trackless thicket.

Last night, I got home a little early from work because I not only had my dance lesson to go to at 6:30, but I also had a pumpkin cheesecake to make for a party here at work today. 

It turned out perfect by the way.  Getting it out of the pan without tearing it up is a challenge to put it mildly, but this morning when I went to remove it, it practically fell out onto the silver platter.  Just beautiful!  Anyway….

So I’d put the cheesecake in the oven and, being a Xanga addict, sat down to read a little before having to rush out the door so I could get a little supper somewhere en route to my dance class.  Jeb was still playing a video game with his son, so I was on my own.  There wasn’t much time, so I just pulled up the first blog that caught my interest and tried to speed-read it while all I really wanted to do was unwind for a bit.  It was a blog by Roxics about his being bisexual.  I’m no speed reader.  I was too interested in any case. 

I got about half-way through before Jeb perked up to remind me that I’d better get going.  I shut it down with the hope of finishing it this morning, but no joy.  It’s been removed, dang it anyway.  But it got me thinking about… I don’t know… what it must really be like.  I was still thinking about it when I got back from dancing and was spooned up, drifting off to sleep in the fold of Jeb’s arm.

My dream (that I can remember – there were probably others) was rather a naughty one so if you are an innocent and would like to remain so, please leave now - though I will spare us all the more graphic details of it because I am still blushing quite fiercely over it.

I dreamed of Jeb and I being in some sort of private club, in a large room divided up by planters full of tropical plants and trees in big flower pots with big candles scattered amongst them and red velvet cushions tucked into nooks and crannies and corners everywhere.  We were among friends though.  Everyone there was someone we had some sort of loving relationship with.  Well, not family unless they were distant family, but friends from out of all our lives going back to childhood.

We were talking and laughing and simply catching up with each other because we hadn’t all seen each other for a really long time.  Some of them, for instance, were best friends from high school that we’d lost touch with.  Some were fellow bloggers.  At least one of them was a very distant cousin.  Sounds innocent enough right?  Then someone suggested a game…

We wrote our names on scraps of paper, folded them, and threw them into a big black magician’s top hat someone had brought.  Then someone held the hat up and the first person nearest reached in and drew out a name.  This is where the game started resembling a cross between Twister, Spin the Bottle, and Russian Roulette.

The name could be your own.

The name could be your best friend’s.

The name could be someone you’ve fantasized about or NEVER fantasized about.

The name could be a man or a woman’s.

Whosever name it was, you’d go off with the person (even if it was only yourself) to one of those tucked away red velvet cushions and… uhm… play.

See?  I told you I’d leave out the graphic details.  Try not to be so disappointed.  I’m giving you sufficient clues.

No actual sex; just foreplay; teasing all the way to the boundary and never ever crossing it (well, almost never); maddening but fun and sometimes downright strange – rather like my marital relationship.

We drew and played several times at specific intervals.

More than a few ended up spending time in a corner alone.  Poor things.

Jeb once ended up with a man.

I once ended up with a female best friend from high school. (Never even thought about that before that I can recall!)

Another time, Jeb drew one woman’s name and the woman who next drew immediately drew his from the hat so he ended up with two women at once and very happy about it.

That was good, because the name of the man I drew right afterwards was that of someone I’ve had very ardent fantasies about for most of my life and Jeb knew it.  In fact, he started to make a very jealous sounding protest, complaining that I’d somehow rigged the game.  But his female companions soon had him distracted and his protests were swiftly muffled and drifted off.

LOL!

I must admit though that in the shadows behind the tropical plants betwixt the golden pools of candlelight, there may have been a bit more going on than mere play.

Sorry I’m so bad.  I’m going to work now… in a bit.

My footprints are bothering me lately:  LOTS of footprints from all over the world.  Hardly any with a name on them I recognize.  I feel snooped on but not loved and very bummed out over it.

Cheering point this morning, other than the party coming, was news of some Somali pirate butt getting kicked when they tried to take the Mersk Alabama for a second time and the Mersk surprised them by defending itself this time.  Poor little pirates!

NOT!!!  They so had it coming!  Is it bad of me to note that?

Read it for yourself: Pirates again attack Maersk Alabama.

Good morning world.

Oh... you were expecting a recipe for Pumpkin Cheesecake?  Okay, here it is:

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees farenheit.

Prepare a crust of ground peacan, crushed graham crackers (6 or so), margarine/butter, and sugar in a 9" baking pan. I use one shaped like a jack-o-lantern.  Be sure to use cooking spray up the sides of the pan if the crust doesn't quite reach it.  You want no part of the filling itself to touch the bare metal.

Soften 32 ozs of cream cheese in a big glass bowl in the microwave for 2 minute then take it out and beat it until its fluffy.  Beat in 3/4 cup brown sugar, 3 eggs, 2 TBSP flour, 32 oz pumpkin pie mix, and few drops orange extract. 

Pour it into the crusted pan and bake for 1 hour and 45 minutes.  Brush with maple syrup.

Cool entirely.  Use a butter knife to make sure the cheese cake is sufficiently loosened from the pan. Then place a platter over the pan and turn it upside down so that the cake falls out of the pan and onto the platter.

Bon apetit!  This stuff is good! Of course, it would always like a bit of whip cream atop the servings.  That's a given.

In reference to the 1979 hostage crisis wherein 52 Americans were held hostage by Iranian street rabble - young Ahmadinejad their leader - for 444 days, Jimmy Carter said:

"My main advisers insisted that I should attack Iran," he said. "I could have destroyed Iran with my weaponry. But I felt in the process it was likely the hostages' lives would be lost, and I didn't want to kill 20,000 Iranians. So I didn't attack." - Carter defends handling of Iran hostage crisis

I just thought that was interesting.  At the time it happened, I was simply baffled that we didn't attack Iran and shocked that this little pissant country I'd never even heard of before was taking such risky liberties with our good graces, burning our flag, and shouting "Death to America" both in Teheran and in the U.S. while they did it.  It was outrageous to me. 

I thought Carter was being a real weakling for not promptly kicking their butts straight into outer space.  I'm sure I'm not the only one that thought so.  Even Carter knows he lost the election for it... but he says he'd do it again.  And of course he's right about one thing: his restraint saved the lives of hostages and Iranians alike.  The lives of our soldiers... not sure, but it doesn't sound as though the plan was to send in ground troops then; just bombs.

Yet it was hard then to understand who exactly was ruling Iran after they kicked the shah out.  It looked like pure anarchy: no laws, no order, only one person other than Ahmadinejad, the student leader of the hostage takers, appeared to have any charge of the rabble at all: an elderly bearded, turbaned religious teacher named Khomeni. 

Our government then had a policy of not engaging in any form of negotiations or diplomacy with terrorists, hostage takers, or other criminals, so talking to Ahmadinejad was out of the question.  It seems our government's standards have slipped since them, but anyway...

Me being not as versed in history then as I am now, Khomeni's possible leadership seemed like a joke to me.  Who ever heard of a crochety old religious teacher out of some primitive village/lifestyle in charge of a nation?  And I wasn't the only one confused about it either.  The question of who was really in charge was being bounced all over the media.  Unlike the jihadi types, Americans in general do not like to attack the innocent while they are busy taking out the bad guys.  We'd prefer a surgical strike.  But all we were seeing was a confusing rabble that, by the way, hated us intensely.

In retrospect, I'm glad Carter didn't bomb Iran.  I've known some wonderful Iranians that would not have deserved that.  It's just a shame the malcreants among them ended up becoming the ruling class.  I wonder sometimes if things would have ended up differently, if the IRI would never have formed, if Carter had bombed Iran.  I wonder too, if there would have been less terrorism against us from that quarter of the world if we'd just nipped it in the bud right at the get-go.

As it is, they showed no appreciation for having been spared.  They shouted "Death to America!" and committed one terrorist act against us after another until, to date, the attacks have become daily.  The IRI is practically a leader of anti-Americanism and terrorism coming at us out of the Middle East.  Not that are alleged "allies" in Dar Islam are any less our enemies on that front.  Would a strong show at the get-go have stopped all that before it began?

Anyway... we went to see that movie 2012 yesterday.  It is intense as Jeb's sorely squeezzed arm can readily prove!  I highly recommend it. 

Without being too much a spoiler though, there were three little things that bugged me about it, though:

1.  According to the Mayan calendar, it's supposed to take place on 12-21-2012.  That date is during the Christmas season, but you sure couldn't tell it by the movie.  Either that, or I'm not remembering it properly.

2.  The Mayans in the movie killed themselves for fear of 12-21-2012.  That's unrealistic.  They wouldn't.  They're not afraid of that date.  They just consider it a time of great change - and a cyclic one at that; not something to kill themselves over.

3.  There was an Arab prince that was approached in the movie to help fund a rescue project for a select few (the number of people and animals required to insure survival of the various species) in return for his family being among those rescued. 

I have to say, I've liked nearly all of the Saudi women I've encountered, but completely loathed every single one of their men either met or simply heard of.  They've all been slave keepers/traders, or pedophiles, or terrorist supporters, or terrorists, truly reprobate playboys, incredibly cruel, or arrogant, or all of the above in addition to me serious male chauvenists with very misogynist ways.  I'm not kidding about this. 

So, yep, I shuddered to see one rescued even in the movie.  I was glad about his many wives and children.  But the thought occurred to me: all our attackers lately have been males of Dar Islam: Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalian, and Sudan mostly.  Would it be absolutely necessary to rescue them if the world were in total upheaval when their end would surely mean the end of daily terrorism and oppression of women?

I know, I know, bad of me to harbor such antipathy toward them.  I just can't find any reason not to. 

Their lawyers are so worried about how they can possibly get a fair trial in New York, a city that so very thoroughly hates them.

Some New Yorkers on the other hand are worried that the terrorist's presence there somehow makes them an even bigger target than they were before the attacks.  New Yorkers worry about 9/11 trial

I don't see why that would  be so.  They were attacked without reason to begin with.  Why should this trial make any difference?  The terrorists are unreasonably lucky to even get a trial.  They certainly don't deserve the courtesy.  They are not American citizens.  They are enemy combatants.  They killed 3,000 people of ours on 9/11, not to mention the other attacks we know them guilty of.  They didn't give our people a fair trial before incinerating them.  In fact, those people were INNOCENT of any criminal offense.  The same can not be said of these terrorists.

Families of the victims are justifiably insulted that these terrorist will have lawyers defending them, trying to make them out as victims when, in fact, they are nothing short of obscenely evil, deserving of everything they dished out to their victims; nothing more, nothing less.  Lucky them, our people are not as savage as they are.

How about we just execute them without a trial, incinerate the bodies, and then mix them with chicken manure and sawdust to fertilize a nice flower garden at ground zero, make something beautiful at last out these humans-turned-demons-turned-ash.  The least these they can do is put flowers on the graves of their victims.

Just a thought.

Another thought.  It seems there is hope for Iran albeit none at all for its totalitarian Islamic Regime. 

On the 4th of this November, it was the 30th Anniversary of the storming of the U.S. Embassy, which the IRI has celebrated ever since 1979 via reenactments and anti-American demonstrations.  This year, sensing trouble afoot for themselves, the regime specifically ordered that no demonstrations but those be carried out.

Of course that order was ignored.  Of course there were counter protests and despite threats of violence from the regime and the knowledge that those threats were not idle. It seems the Iranian people are regaining their courage to fight back.  See: Reports from Tehran and New protests in Iran.

I think President Obama was trying to be supportive of the anti-regime demonstrators when he responded to them with:

We have heard for thirty years what the Iranian government is against; the question, now, is what kind of future it is for. The American people have great respect for the people of Iran and their rich history. The world continues to bear witness to their powerful calls for justice, and their courageous pursuit of universal rights.  It is time for the Iranian government to decide whether it wants to focus on the past, or whether it will make the choices that will open the door to greater opportunity, prosperity, and justice for its people.

But it was precisely the wrong tact to take.  The Iranian people are out there screaming that their regime is illegitimate and they want to it upended, but Obama is still offering it this token diplomacy as if it were a legitimate government and its people could possibly forgive and accept it now.  Their response, chanted in the streets of Teheran, was short and sweet and to the point:  "Are you with us or against us, Obama?"

Good question!

Even so, the tactics of the anti-regime demonstrators still puzzle me here and there:

They stormed the Russian Embassy in counter to the pro-regimist.  Uhm... Why?  What's the point?  And why did the Basenji throw tear gas on them in response?

Is the Russian Embassy there still occupied?  I thought it was empty, that the Soviets left when we did. Or is it just a coded message of some sort?  I remember when their parent's generation used to shout, "Neither East nor West; Islam is the best!"

Do they still feel that way about Islam after being brutalized and defamed by it for the past 30 years?  And will Iran still want to be an Islamic country after they've finally rid themselves of the IRI, as I'm sure they will?

Another anti-regime group chanted "Down with the English!"  Again, why?  Are the Brits being friendly with the IRI as the Iranian demonstrators now perceive Obama to be?  That I can understand if so but, still... you'd think they'd want international support against the regime and so want to avoid burning bridges.  But hey, that's just me.

Nor do these groups seem entirely coordinated with one another.  One was, justly, shouting "Death to the dictator!" over shouts of  the pro-regimists shouting "Death to America!"  Another group was shouting "Death to no one!!"  But which group was it in counterpoint to?

I hope Obama will take a clue from this and realize that the only way to win and support the Iranian people in any meaningful way is to NOT have tea or diplomacy with a Iranian government not of the people's choosing or desire.