I still run into people who believe the U.S. FOUND weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (not including the ones they brought with them) after the invasion. I suspect Israel and the U.S. have a lot in common in terms of poisonous atmospheres of public opinion.

OK, yeah, that's a weird cat.

I know a cat who likes to eat watermelon. WTF? I used to shake my head at him and say, "aren't you supposed to be a carnivore?"

My little gray cat Niko loved to eat watermelon! I'd give her a chunk and she'd sit on her haunches like a squirrel and hold the chunk in one paw and eat it sitting there. She was crazy for watermelon. I don't believe cats can't taste sweet things.

Oh, that's a really cute mental picture, Zen.

Hey, how'd that vanilla solid perfume turn out? I've been wondering.

I know a cat who likes to eat watermelon. WTF? I used to shake my head at him and say, "aren't you supposed to be a carnivore?"

My little gray cat Niko loved to eat watermelon! I'd give her a chunk and she'd sit on her haunches like a squirrel and hold the chunk in one paw and eat it sitting there. She was crazy for watermelon.

"Sometimes I like to crumble the Weetabix in the blood. Gives it a little texture."

In his biography Chuck Amuck, Chuck Jones tells a great story about Johnson, the cat that showed up one summer when he was a kid at the family house on the beach. He hung out with the family all summer long, and they found out that his favorite food in the world was grapefruit. They'd give it to him whole, and he'd use one canine tooth to drill a hole into the peel and chew himself a bigger hole until he could get to the fruit inside. He'd then eat the whole grapefruit and end up wearing the peel on his head like a helmet.

Oh, and he also loved to swim in the ocean.

The whole story (and a drawing of Johnson with the grapefruit helmet) is here.

Our Cat the Small loves cooked brocolli. Like, will jump from a shelf on to your dinner plate to steal it kind of love. Cat the Large loves dried apricots. He worked out how to use drawers so he could get at them one day when we were out. And generally he's pretty dumb.

My Jeeves will sniff at most human food, but has no interest in eating it--with a few exceptions.

He loves salad greens, the more bitter, the better. Damn cat once ate a flat of arugula seedlings down to the roots and left the nearby catnip untouched.

Also, although he thinks most cheese is of the devil (he will flinch back in disgust when he sniffs it, then do the bury-the-poop scraping around it), he adores Parmagiano Reggiano and stinky blue cheeses. Go figure.

I suspect Israel and the U.S. have a lot in common in terms of poisonous atmospheres of public opinion.

Oh man. So much this. Even I forget to question data I'm fed by media every once in a while, because there's so much data out there to observe and comment on, and hey, this is not Academia where I can check the sources of the paper. In the bottom line, Goebbels was right - if you'll repeat a lie enough times, it'll become truth (which is why I sometime wonder if it's that wise to teach basic semiotics to all).

The Israeli version, so far, is that most passengers on the ship were Al-Qaeda activists who tried to lynch our beloved troops. No, really. That's really, really what they're saying. Allow me to weep in the corner, silently.

One of my older relatives seemed almost horrified that I wouldn't just accept the IDF version of things as truth without hearing from other sources. Like I was a traitor to the Zionist cause or something by daring to question anything that an Israeli official said. Apparently I am an example of how young American Jews don't care about Israel. (My argument that of COURSE I care about Israel, if I didn't care then I wouldn't be upset, if I didn't care then I wouldn't want them to handle things better, didn't seem to penetrate. Neither did my, "Hi, have you met me? I don't believe anything that anybody says. It would be completely weird for me to suddenly take the IDF at their word.")