When I am old, I will be a kind (but slightly creepy, and of course wealthy) cat lady, who always smells of lavender and peppermint, and houses 25 or more healthy, chubby little cats and kittens, who will all be spayed and neutered, of course. I will have a handsome young gardener named Irwin, who tends my roses and herbs and feeds my cats, and in exchange I will make him dinner and innocently introduce him to my lovely great-granddaughters. I will offer peppermints and hot chocolate to the neighborhood boys who mow my lawn and help me walk across the street. Know-it-all teenage girls will say that I am “such a cute old lady” during one of their many conversations about how cute old people are. I will play the piano for my church, but will be so old and deaf that mistakes become as frequent as harmony, yet no one will mind because they assume I will die soon and leave them to another aging pianist. They will assume I will die soon for at least 25 years, as I get older and older, yet stay spry enough continue to teach piano and sing in the choir and bake the most delicious cakes and cookies in the history of history for all my family and neighbors… and that’s as far as I go, for now.
Every one of us is precious in the cosmic perspective. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.
— Carl Sagan, astronomer and writer (1934-1996)
I rip all my music to my external hard drive and then just listen to the MP3s, so I have a bunch of CDs lying around that I never use anymore. So I decided to give them all away. To anyone. Anywhere. All you have to do send me a message or comment explaining why you should win them.
The first CD I’m giving away is Cease to Begin by Band of Horses. The case is in semi-rough shape, but the disc and album art are in mint condition.
Songs:
Is There a Ghost
Ode to LRC
No One’s Gonna Love You (my fave)
Detlef Schrempf
The General Specific
Lamb on the Lam (In the City)
Islands on the Coast
Marry Song
Cigarettes, Wedding Bands
Window Blues
So… why do you want this album? You have until this Friday to let me know!
And of course, I will not do anything evil with your contact information. I don’t swing that way.
The highest result of education is tolerance.
— Helen Keller, author and lecturer (1880-1968)
Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.
— Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983)
The Pentagon’s latest figures show that nearly 3,000 women were sexually assaulted in fiscal year 2008, up 9% from the year before; among women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, the number rose 25%. When you look at the entire universe of female veterans, close to a third say they were victims of rape or assault while they were serving — twice the rate in the civilian population. The problem is even worse than that. The Pentagon estimates that 80% to 90% of sexual assaults go unreported, and it’s no wonder. Anonymity is all but impossible; a Government Accountability Office report concluded that most victims stay silent because of “the belief that nothing would be done; fear of ostracism, harassment, or ridicule; and concern that peers would gossip.” More than half feared they would be labeled troublemakers. A civilian who is raped can get confidential, or “privileged,” advice from her doctors, lawyers, victim advocates; the only privilege in the military applies to chaplains. A civilian who knows her assailant has a much better chance of avoiding him than does a soldier at a remote base, where filing charges can be a career killer — not for the assailant but the victim.
![thedailywhat:
Kitten Shark Cat Sweater of the Day: From Etsy seller Youth Diaspora.
One, please. Size: Human.
[boingboing.]](http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kz134cbj5T1qzpwi0o1_500.jpg)
