I don’t like cats. I don’t like their skulking, their diffidence, their prissiness, their meowing, their fur — in fact, I don’t like any characteristic or quality of cats. Give me slobbering, blundering, shallow, happy-to-see-you dogs any day.
Still, although I despise cats, I don’t wish them or their misguided owners ill. So I was sorry to read that studies are indicating a link between cat ownership and serious mental illness. The causal chain goes something like this. Cat feces contains a parasite called Toxoplasma gondii. Cat owners come into contact with the parasite in the feces when they clean litter boxes. The parasite then can cause an infection that may produce schizophrenia and lead to suicide.
It’s bad enough that cat lovers are cursed with wanting to have haughty, secretive, unappreciative creatures living in their homes and having to tend to smelly kitty droppings as a result. It seems grossly unfair that feline fanciers also have to run the risk of going off their rocker, too.
So it is with the Supreme Court health care ruling. We now know that the Affordable Health Care Act (h/t to Cousin Jeff) has survived, and when we raise our heads and look around, things everywhere are still stuck in neutral.
Actually, calling it a wave isn’t all that accurate, because there’s no side-to-side motion. It’s just a flip of the wrist and showing of the open palm, as if the jogger wanted to demonstrate that he isn’t carrying a knife or revolver. It’s like the hand that appeared above the head of Paul McCartney on the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band cover, which was supposed to be another of the clues demonstrating that McCartney was killed in a car crash. No wonder the joggers’ wave doesn’t exactly warm the cockles of my heart.
