Get Cynical

And nobody with a confederate flag behind them would ever say anything racist……..

From Liss at Shakesville:

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t want Iran having any nukes for multiple reasons, but mostly because I don’t want anyone having any nukes. But I remain consistently amazed that the leadership of countries with nuclear weaponry expect other countries to be okay with that power imbalance.

Yeah, I’ve always been a bit confused about that also.

(via Bot Junkie)

From Tokyo Times. And more here.

Thanks to Inti for sending in his cat, Chulingo.

Your blog is an everyday read for me, and I thought I could suggest a candidate for Guest Cat Blogging. Apart from being photogenic, he has a particular story.

In September 2001 I was living in Nicaragua. It had been 2 weeks since 9/11 when I found this 1-month-old kitten on a sidewalk grass patch, crying soaking wet under the rain.

In this particular context, I tastelessly thought of calling him Osama, but then settled for a more traditional ‘Chulingo’, a Mexican nickname.

Later I found him a ‘brother’ in the same manner.

Before I left the country for good in 2004, Chulingo’s bro was killed by a car, almost right before my eyes. I didn’t want the same to happen to Chulingo (as it often happens in Nicaragua, which has little consideration for animals), so I got him on the plane with me. He was, after all, the first cat I had found and cared for by myself, even though I’ve always had cats around since childhood.

The 14-hour-long trip in the plane’s baggage hold must have been quite an ordeal; I did give him a sedative but it would last only a few hours. We traveled from Managua, then Panama, then Caracas, then Milan, to Brussels, final destination. I was fearing he might soil his cage, but this good fella held on until we got him out and he immediately knew how to use the litterbox.

Chulingo now lives happily at my mom’s house in the Belgian countryside, and got quite fat. This is him in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhdDnnC9V9s

This one is a repeat. Two years ago, Valerie sent in a picture of her new kitten, Shadow.

And here is Shadow today masquerading as a big ball of fur.

(via Joe My God)

How much will a $20 dollar tip given to the right person in NYC get you? That’s what this author attempted to find out:

A twenty should not be a ticket so much as a solution. You have a problem, you need something from the back room, you don’t want to wait, you whip out the twenty.

I could have stood in line at the airport cabstand for fifteen minutes like every other mook in the world, freezing my balls off, but such is not the way of the twenty-dollar millionaire. I walked straight to the front of the line and offered a woman twenty bucks for her spot. She took it with a shrug. Behind her, people crackled. “Hey! Ho!” they shouted. I knew exactly what that meant. It wasn’t good. I needed to get in a cab soon. One of the guys flagging cabs pointed me to the back of the line. That’s when I grabbed him by the elbow, pulled him close, and shook his hand, passing the next twenty. I was now down forty dollars for a twenty-dollar cab ride. He tilted his head and nodded to his partner. I peeled another twenty and they let me climb in. As we pulled away, someone in the line threw a half-empty cup of coffee against my window.

That whole event had been too public, too visible. Another lesson learned: The bigger the favor–which is to say, the more visible the favor–the more discreet the pass should be. A security guy elbows his way through the crowd to get you up against the stage at a concert and you slip him the twenty quietly, at belt level. Conversely, the smaller the favor, the bigger the flourish. The bellman brings you a bottle of seltzer on a rainy afternoon, you pass that twenty as if the world were watching.

A few months later he tried the same $20 trick in other cities.

(via Kottke)