INTRODUCING ALICE

Gentle Readers . . . and Maxwell,

Alice* came to us as a six-year-old foster dog through Mike at Florida Urgent Rescue [FUR]. No one knows where she came from, but it's clear she had a hard life. She was living on the streets in a different county, picked up as a stray, and ended up in a kill shelter, where Mike rescued her.

I've worked with shy, unsocialized dogs more than once. Penelope is the most recent example. That's why I had so many photos of Penny hiding behind the furniture or in my closet. But I think the word to describe Alice is traumatized. 

It's difficult for me to tell you this part of Alice's story, but Mike said he thought Alice had been beaten. 

Alice had her first appointment with Dr. G last week. Dr. G said she acts like a dog that's been beaten. Every time I tell that part of Alice's story my throat clutches and closes up and I start to cry.

Now I've told you, so let's focus on Alice's progress.

Everything with Alice has been baby steps. At first, she wanted to spend all her time on the bed in my bedroom. Not long after she joined us, Alice told me in this video, Stay away. Do not touch me. Do not look at me. Leave me alone. You are not safe.

Mike provided a baby gate to go across the bedroom door so Alice could stay in the bedroom on her own if she preferred, but she spent so much time in the bedroom that she built a new bathroom next to the bed.

We had to take action. I put a leash on Alice, which upset her so much that she pooped in the bed, and led her to the family room. I closed the gate behind us so she had to stay out of the bedroom. She likes the doggie bed in the corner of the family room that's placed a bit behind the couch.

During the past week, Alice has rested her weary bones on Princess' bed a few times. That's a lot of progress because it means she's out in the open.

I was shocked when she started to hop up on the couch. At first, she stayed in the far corner of the couch and faced away from me.

More progress. She can get closer to me on the couch and face me.

For a long time, Alice couldn't run past me when she came in the back door. I had to stand between the washer and dryer with my back to her. Then she would come in the door.

Now she's able to dash past me while I'm standing in the doorway facing her. I give her lots of praise.

I would like to pet Alice, but it's too much for her. When I adjust her collar, put on her leash, any time I have to be close to her, I scratch her neck and back, tickle her behind her ears, and pet her till I've loosened enough Alice hair to knit Christmas stockings for everyone I know.

I know she likes these moments. But they are rare. I wonder if and when the time will come that Alice doesn't flinch when I put out my hand.

Alice became an official member of our family during August. Alice and Princess are devoted to one another. The relationship is good for both of them.

We'll have Alice stories in the future.

Infinities of love,

Janie Junebug

 *The shelter gave Alice a different name. She wasn't attached to it, and Mike said I had naming rights so she is Alice. We'll talk about names another day.

MEME MONDAY

The new dress code in the land of the felons.

The felon made Little Marco wear this outfit
so he could stand in front of him.

Mitch McConnell has settled into his rehab facility and
likes it so much he might not ever leave.

It's far longer than 54 days now.

Eric Blackerby

August 15 at 5:18 PM ·

Donald Trump never made Wharton’s Dean’s List. He never graduated with honors. The 1968 commencement program from the University of Pennsylvania lists every cum laude, magna cum laude and summa cum laude student in his class, and his name isn’t on it. Decades of Trump insisting he finished first in his class turned out to be a goddamn lie nobody bothered to check until reporters finally pulled the actual paperwork.

Jared Kushner got into Harvard the same way. His father Charles Kushner pledged $2.5 million to the school in 1998, paid out in yearly installments of $250k, and Jared was accepted the following year. Administrators at his high school told journalist Daniel Golden his grades and test scores didn’t come close to warranting it. Kushner Companies calls the connection false. The check cleared anyway.

Jim Jordan earned a law degree from Capital University in 2001. He never took the bar exam. He’s spent years running the House Judiciary Committee, lecturing witnesses and prosecutors about the law, and he’s not a licensed attorney in any state. Nobody stopped him. Nobody in his own party seems to give a damn.

Rand Paul let his real ophthalmology certification from the American Board of Ophthalmology lapse in 2005. So he founded his own certifying board, named himself president, put his wife and father in law in charge, and called himself board certified for over a decade. The board he invented wasn’t recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties, the American Medical Association or the state of Kentucky.

Mike Johnson took a job in 2010 as founding dean of a law school in Shreveport, Louisiana. He gave a speech about how it couldn’t fail. It never enrolled a single student. It never opened its doors. It collapsed after the accreditation fell through, and Johnson doesn’t bring it up these days.

Sources: Daily Pennsylvanian, ProPublica, Punchbowl News, Snopes, Associated Press

Let's conclude with a little satire from Andy Borowitz.

August 4 ·

FRANKFORT, KENTUCKY—Calling the situation “unacceptable to the people of my state,” on Tuesday Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear demanded to know whether or not Senator Rand Paul was brain-dead.

“I have viewed disturbing video taken last week in the US Senate in which Senator Paul appears to be brain-dead,” Beshear told reporters. “As governor, I demand that he inform Kentuckians about his status—if, in fact, he is capable of human speech.”

Beshear said he became “alarmed” when he viewed the video, in which Paul exhibited “brain activity consistent with that of a coma patient or Tommy Tuberville.”

The governor’s announcement was only the latest controversy to embroil Paul, just days after shocking evidence emerged that he may have been created in a lab leak.

Someone give him a little shove.
Please.

      

I STILL HAVE HOPE

Dear Hearts and Gentle People,

I know the stupidity is overwhelming. The high prices are exhausting. Injuries and deaths in the made-up war are maddening. The Supreme felon's Court handed him a win on the bunker, where Carol and I think he plans to hide in 2029 so he can stay in place without running in 2028. (Go, little blood clot, go.)

Mid-terms are coming up. We know the felon's gang plans on cheating. We know voter turn-out for mid-terms can be low.

But a recent study by the University of Massachusetts Amherst found that nearly 2/3 of Americans are fed-up with the felon,* and those folks aren't all Democrats. 

Even so, the Democrats need to get their act together. As much as I enjoy hearing Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia call the felon a crook, our message has to be more focused than We're not him.

Although I continue to believe the Epstein Files are what it's all about and a lot of people who are in those files belong in prison, how about this message: 

IT'S THE ECONOMY, STUPID!

People somehow believed it when Cankles McGee said he'd bring grocery prices down on Day One. A lot of those people voted with their wallets. (Sadly, they also did not want to vote for an intelligent woman of color who laughed.) Those same people, along with the rest of us who aren't billionaires, are now tired of going to the grocery store and not being able to afford the cheapest chuck roast for the crock pot.   

I don't know who we'll nominate in 2028, but we have to settle on a message soon and hammer it home with plans that have coherent points. Polls and studies tell me we're headed in the right direction, and that direction is left.

I also still have hope for our country because of the response to Dolly Parton's death. I haven't heard anyone say anything unkind about her. Not even Little Shitler. We've seen a flood of love, respect, and appreciation for her talent, kindness, and generosity. I'm not a big country music fan, but I happen to think Jolene is one of the greatest songs ever written. Knowing that people care about Dolly cheers me.

My love tap from Princess is better. It's still red and ugly, but the cut has closed. 

Does anyone have special plans for the long weekend? I think I only have one more form to fill out and mail tomorrow and then I'll be caught up, but the forms make me so happy I think I'll find some even more meaningless forms to fill out for the fun of it when I'm not filling out forms for work. Saturday, Sunday, Monday, it's nothing but forms, forms, forms. I can't wait. Maybe I'll write a song about the glory of forms. Start giving form parties.

Ah, my life is filled with wonder and amazement.

Oh, and it's still LAKE ONTARIO, my favourite great lake.

Infinities of love,

Janie Junebug

*Fed up with the felon is my wording, not that of the university

Jack, Jack, Jack, how I love you. You're even more pasty faced than I am. Save me from the republicanism of floriduh, Jack. Take me away from it all, the way Calgon in bath water used to do for women. I know you'll never let me down.

BUSYBUSYBUSY

 Gentle Readers . . . and Maxwell,

I have been busy filling out forms, filing forms, downloading forms, emailing forms, mailing forms . . . have I missed anything that can be done with forms? And I have more to do. Early this afternoon I have an important appointment that will lead to more forms, I'm sure, and I'm already aware of other decisions that must be made that will lead to––what? FORMS!

At least it keeps me off the streets.

I saw an ad for a movie on the Hallmark Channel titled The Curious Caterer, but I thought it said The Curious Catheter. That made me laugh.

I have another boo-boo, but not all bloody like the last time (the link is to the post with the bloody wound in case you didn't see it the first time around and you're wondering what I'm talking about). If the sight of boo-boos turns your stomach, though, scroll down real quick past the photos below with your eyes closed. When you open your eyes maybe you'll be on someone else's blog and you'll have completely missed The Wound of The Week, kind of like when there used to be The Movie of The Week. Boy, that was a long time ago. Anypaw, Princess caused this wound. She is not allowed to paw at me because, of course, her paws are large and very rough. Her nails can be sharp.

Princess is a very good girl, but sometimes we all make mistakes. On Sunday, Princess put her paw on my left arm and before I could say Princess, no, which is the standard thing to say according to her training, or remove the paw, she cut a line near the crook of my elbow like a kid who had joined a '50s style gang and had pulled her shiv on me. I don't remember what I said. I didn't yell at her. I might have said holy shit or something else equally intelligent because it hurt. She knew something bad had happened and hopped down from the couch to watch me from the dining room. She had the worried look on her face that dogs get when they know something bad has happened and they're involved but they don't know what's wrong so all they can do is look like they wanna say holy shit, too. So we were both distressed.

I washed the wound and band-aided it. Here it is Monday with and without the band-aids.

 It's still a little sore, but no big deal.

See how the one without band-aids has a shadow on it so those of you with queasy stomachs won't have to rush off to barf? I tell ya, I can come up with some pretty fancy photography when necessary. 

Steve Reed at Shadows & Light wishes he could take pictures as good as mine.

My wounds probably look much worse than they really are because my skin is made out of tissue paper. It rips, turns red, and bruises if I barely bump in to anything. That's because I'm a decrepit, old person. 

Except I'm not all that decrepit. It bugs me when I watch a movie and somebody retires at 65 and the character is hobbling around, barely able to do anything, can't use a computer, can't remember anything. Bullshit! I left 65 behind a while back and other than the occasional back trouble, I'm pretty crepit (crepit isn't a word, but it might be added to the dictionary if we start using it regularly). I can't afford a yard service, so I mow my own yard. I have two big ole dogs who depend on me. 

AND I have forms to fill out!

Princess told the truth when she wrote about our official adoption of her "gest," whose name is, indeed, Alice. We'll be providing more information about Alice soon. She has her first appointment with Dr. G. coming up. Alice will need doggy chill pills because she is terrified of people. She is the most frightened dog I have ever cared for. 

I might need chill pills to get through her appointment, too. Maybe I should share with Dr. G.

Talk to ya soon.

Oh! Wait a minute! I almost forgot to say there's no such thing as a fucking Lake America. IT'S LAKE ONTARIO. That moron in D.C. does this stupid shit because it distracts people from the serious shit he's doing, like getting members of our armed forced injured and even killed for no damn reason. STOP MESSING WITH OUR BEAUTIFUL FRIENDS IN CANADA.

Infinities of love,

Janie Junebug

MEME MONDAY

 

THE WIZARD OF WAS

 

HERE A MITCH THERE A MITCH EVERYWHERE A MITCH MITCH

 Dear Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky.

I know you're frustrated with the Mitch McConnell situation. You haven't seen the senior senator from your state since the middle of June, but you have to learn to ignore all those silly rumors about his health. Yes, he's fallen once or twice but only because some damned democrat tripped him. At the moment he's recovering from eating a tainted  jalapeño popper. And it's summer. Why shouldn't he take time off during the summer? Really, Andy, you expect too much.

Stop demanding proof that your esteemed senator is all right. I can tell you for a fact that he's fine. I talked to him on the phone this morning for 20 minutes –– not one minute more and not one minute less. We chatted about the times he froze in public. He explained to me that every time he froze he had finished a chocolate ice cream cone less than five minutes before. Now he knows he shouldn't have ice cream until he gets home at night and Elaine feeds it to him. 

What's that, Andy? So many people say they've talked to the Great & Powerful One on the phone but you won't believe he's okay unless you talk to him yourself? Well, I can do better than that. Let me sign off and I'll send you photos of our beloved Senator McConnell. Pictures should convince you he's fine and dandy.

Lots of love to you and the whole state of Kentucky, Andy, from your old pal,

Janie Junebug

And here's my favorite photo of our greatest senator:

I was sure Miss Lindsey was keeping an eye
on Senator McConnell from heaven and
now I know it for a fact!