Who Knew the Grim Reaper Had a Sense of Irony?

Let's chat a bit about Clayton Lockett.

You know -- the late Clayton Lockett who's reaping all kinds of misguided (and misplaced) sympathy because the drugs used to execute him didn't kill him quickly enough to satisfy death penalty opponents.

The late Clayton Lockett, career criminal.

The late Clayton Lockett who was convicted and sentenced to death by a jury for the torture, beating, rape, sodomy, burying alive, and murder of a 19 year-old young woman in Oklahoma -- a young victim who was selected at random during a crime spree Lockett launched shortly after he was released from prison.

The late Clayton Lockett who died of a heart attack some 43 minutes after he was sedated, and after writhing, twitching, and convulsing for quite some time while the Grim Reaper took a coffee break.

The Clayton Lockett whom doctors contemplated taking to the hospital shortly before he breathed his last. (Taking to the hospital?!?!)

The Clayton Lockett whom many claim suffered a "botched" execution.

That execution wasn't botched. Clayton Lockett died. In agony, as did his victim. Man may err, but God doesn't make mistakes.

And I believe it was probably the vengeful, Old Testament God who had a hand in Clayton Lockett's demise.

So, shall we chat about Clayton Lockett?

No. Let the trash in the landfill stay undisturbed.

I'm not a good enough Christian to feel any pity toward that animal. Nor to speak his name ever again.

Seen During Today's Sojourn to the Westbank

I was going to re-post an old piece about Moogie's idea for a new election system, but then I thought we might all get a kick out of a sign I saw in Marrero, Louisiana, this afternoon while picking up my new contacts.

I first saw my Optometrist on the Saturday before Katrina in 2005 -- I was the last patient she saw before evacuating to Houston with her young son.  She ordered new contacts for me, telling me that they should be available in a few weeks.  Well, we know how that turned out.

Two of her offices flooded, and the one Uptown that I used jacked the rent up so high that she couldn't really afford it.  She ran her practice from the second floor of her home (also flooded) for several months. 

The month following Katrina, she started calling to check on her patients.  She reached me by cell phone and we had a nice chat.  (You might recall that Pepper and I remained evacuated for nine months after The Storm, awaiting Entergy's decision whether to return to its New Orleans headquarters.)  During that conversation she offered to mail my new contacts to me at her own expense!  Wow.  So, after we returned, and she established her new office in Marrero to be close to her son's school, I decided that she had more than earned my loyalty; I kept her as my Optometrist even though she was on the other side of the river in a part of the Westbank that is -- um-- less than "desirable."

So, that's why I was in Marrero this afternoon.

On one side of her office is a Buffalo Wild Wings.  On the other side is "The Epic Lounge." This is the sign hanging above the door to the Epic Lounge:

Did I mention that my Optometrist has a very good sense of humor?

And a concealed carry permit.

As do I.  ;-)

But, I doubt I'll be patronizing The Epic Lounge anytime soon.  Especially after dark, discretion being the better part of valor and all.  Even if one is carrying.

Ah -- life in interesting times!

I'm Too Relieved to be Too Terribly Angry

Way back on April 15th, Pepper and I did the Concealed Carry Course and I mailed off our packets the next day.  The packets were returned some three weeks later because I had enclosed personal checks for the fees instead of cashier's checks.  I corrected the oversight and mailed them back in the next day.

*sigh*

My 34th anniversary gift was a sweet little .22 that fits my hand perfectly, together with a neat little holster that nestles divinely in the small of my back.

Our anniversary was June 9th.

Still waiting.

Having been mailed from Baton Rouge on July 3rd, Pepper's permit arrived in our mailbox last Saturday, the 7th.  He and Bouie have been having safer walks since.  But what about Moogie's?

Do you see where this is going?

I rifled through Saturday's mail in the trash and combed through magazines and advertising circulars searching for the envelope.  I was just about to fear I'd failed the background check, but I strongly suspected that an envelope bearing the return address, "Concealed Handgun Permit Unit," had been mis-delivered by our cracker-jack postal carrier to some thug's house who was going to alter the photo and use it for no good.  I've re-delivered mis-delivered mail so often around here that I should be on the USPS payroll.  Then, this afternoon I got a Facebook message from my good neighbor to tell me that he had just put an important-looking envelope in my mailbox that had been delivered to his house by mistake.  And my good neighbor is not a thug!!

So, now I'm legal!!!

Thanks, R.C.!

(The picture of me is absolutely horrid, so I covered it up to spare your eyes.  I hope I don't ever have to show it to anyone!)

Moogie 1, Thieves 0!

Ah ha!!!  Victory over the thugs is mine!!

Remember when we discovered the theft of our lawn mower (and other stuff) from our garage after Thanksgiving?  Remember how I bought padlocks and heavy chains to reinforce the gate closures?

They worked!

Since Pepper has been out of town for a few days, the Bouie-poop-walk duty has fallen to me.  As we rounded the corner and approached the gate on the side street this morning, I noticed the gate to the back courtyard looked a little whoppy-jawed (translation for those not fluent in Southern: misaligned; crooked; off-center).  Sure enough, upon closer observation, I found the tongue was out of its little slot, meaning that someone had tried to unlatch the gate, to-wit:

And, this time the miscreant thief couldn't simply reach over to unlatch the clasp!  The padlock held! 

Ah, the smell of victory over reprobates is sweet indeed!  But, it's also a little creepy to know that someone was trying to gain access to the yard while Pepper was gone and I was here alone.  Fortunately, I am armed with both weapons and a large black dog who loves me.  He loves to squish plants in the sun, too. 

Nonetheless, I'm glad Pepper comes home tonight.

This has been the strangest winter -- it never got cold enough, for long enough, to kill my potted jalapeno plant, and now it has set five flowers!  And last year's petunia just went a little dormant and has now exploded in purple blossoms!  It was just too mild to kill the annuals, I suppose, except for the basil, whose remains you see beside the pepper plant.

Or, maybe I've become a magical gardener.  Yeah -- I'll go with that.  I'm magical. 

You'd best beware Moogie the Magical, thieving scum, or I'll transform you into the literal slime that you are and deliver you up to Obama's algae-based energy experiments!  At least there you'll be among your own kind, and potentially productive, instead of just another leeching wart on the nose of society.

There.  I feel better.  Can you tell I overdosed on Harry Potter movies this weekend?
          

It's a Good Thing the Grass is Dormant . . .

After a long holiday weekend with friends and family, and after dealing with construction management hell, and after successfully avoiding retail establishments on Black Friday -- and after the Hogs gave that little squeaker to the Tiggers -- Pepper and I made it back to New Orleans yesterday afternoon in plenty of time to unpack and thaw something from the freezer before the Saints/Giants kickoff.  And, what a lovely victory that was, but I digress.

So, this morning I walked Pepper out to the truck in the cold air, carrying his coffee mug, when he asked, "Why is this open?" pointing to the hasp that keeps our back gate secure.  I replied, "And where is the [dog leash] clip?" that we use to keep it locked.

I knew that I double-checked the gate before we left for Little Rock because I went out back to do just that after I had double-checked one of the back doors and found it unlocked.

Pepper stepped out onto the sidewalk and spied the clip in the flowerbed.

Great.

He said, "Can you tell if anything's missing?"  And I replied, "You mean like the lawn mower?"

And we just stared, for several moments, at the suddenly very empty spot where the mower used to sit.  Then we fanned out to try to discern whether anything else was missing.  Generator?  Present.  Porsche?  Present, locked, and intact.  Chainsaw?  Present and accounted for.  It seems that just the lawn mower went on walkabout. Or rollabout.

Crap, nonetheless.

So, Pepper shook his head, climbed into the truck, and headed downtown.

I went inside to file the police report.

Remember when Moogie mounted the Neighborhood Watch sign way back in 2009?

Before our neighborhood was able to call itself officially a Neighborhood Watch area, worthy of displaying the signs, a certain number of residents had to undergo a series of weekly trainings about observation, crime-fighting resources, etc.  One little tidbit I found particularly valuable was the training Officer's explanation of the Non-emergency Police number.  His admonition to use that number when merely reporting something suspicious or minor, so that we wouldn't tie up the emergency 911 operators, struck me as important enough that I programmed the number into my cell phone (along with the FBI's and the DEA's!) right then and there.

Today, I'm not so sure why they bother to maintain separate numbers.

The same people answer the non-emergency number as the emergency 911 number. 

Now I understand why one reads about people getting busy signals, or being put on hold, when calling 911.  Even so, the nice Non-Emergency-911 lady said she could take my call and send over some uniformed officers.

Of course, when I asked one of the officers (who responded within 15 minutes, by the way!) why that was the case and explained that I didn't want to tie up the line in case someone had a real emergency, he told me that you wouldn't believe why some people call 911.  One of his favorites was the mother who wanted the police summoned to tell her teenage daughter that she couldn't go out dressed "like that."  Sheesh.

Anyway, the officers asked me a bunch of questions and talked to one another in code about how they would classify this incident since our garage is open-air on the sides and wouldn't totally support a classification of breaking and entering or burglary.  P.S., Crime statistics are very important in Orleans Parish.  I told them I'd be happy to settle for a little Criminal Trespass and Theft of Property valued at less than $500.00, because I doubted whether we'd ever see the mower again.

I remarked that whoever did it had to know enough about us to figure out that we were leaving town -- Bouie went with us to Little Rock; his big voice has chased many a miscreant away from the yard. -- and how to reach over the gate to unlatch the clip.  He said his best guess was that it was done by some crackhead who regularly strolled the neighborhood looking for jobs cutting grass to support his habit and eat.  I'd say that's probably pretty close to hitting it right on the nose.  And pretty creepy.

So, after the officers did much talking on the radio (while in possession of my drivers license. ???) and filling out paperwork and consulting with other cops, I now have in my possession an official "NOPD Form 26" telling me that I may acquire an official Police Report in 14 -21 "working days,"  for a fee. 

So, if it's not bad enough that you've been robbed already, the City sticks it to you again if you want to file an insurance claim which, in this case, would just be a worthless effort.

By the way, it must have been a slow crime day in the Crescent City -- they sent 2 squad cars and 4 policemen to investigate a stolen lawn mower.

And that picture at the top?  That shiny new padlock is today's MVP -- Most Valuable Purchase! In the sack is a length of chain for the front gate (and another padlock) since it's now cold enough to shrink the metal to where the tongue in the lock won't stay engaged. If the worthless, self-entitled miscreants want to get in again, they're going to have to work for it.

*sigh*

Winter and Discontent

I seem to be doing hit-and-miss posting recently!  Haven't even gotten to make my blog-rounds, but life seems to be calming down a bit now.  The last snowed-out houseguests left yesterday and made it safely home to Arkansas.  I'm slowly putting the house back together -- 9+ loads of linens over the last week! -- and I have now decided that while running a Bed & Breakfast may be good exercise, like aging, it ain't for sissies.

We've also had some uncharacteristically cold weather around these parts -- below freezing!  This is what greeted me this morning while forcing the 16 year-old shih tzu to go outdoors:

The Naughty Children Fountain may be icy on the surface, but they know how to keep the water flowing!

I'm not sure New Orleans birds know how to ice skate!  And check out the gardenias buds hanging out over the frozen water.  That poor bush is really confused.

At least the pipes have stayed intact.  KNOCK WOOD THREE TIMES!!!

I'm still trying to keep myself from throwing up over that wretched display of "look at me!" and "you should dial back the rhetoric" last night presented by the Young President (perhaps we should call him the Great Healer now that he brought Congresswoman Giffords back to consciousness with his very presence), so I won't even go there.  And here I thought he did a pretty poor memorial performance at Ft. Hood.  Egad.  At least he didn't distribute tee shirts to the mourners in uniform at Hood.  (Funny, until I googled "tee shirts at Tucson memorial" I wasn't aware that so many people were just as appalled as I was by the souvenirs of a Day with the Obamas.  There must be many great minds out there.)

I do find the blame-slinging in the Tucson slaughter intriguing.  We certainly couldn't hold Islam responsible for the slaughters at Ft. Hood or at the Recruiter's office in Little Rock, but we certainly could blame everyone on the right from Sarah Palin to bloggers for setting off that fruitcake in Tucson.

I guess I went there, huh.

Oh well, maybe I'm back!

DISCLOSEing My Disgust

The House already passed its version of the Union Campaign Contribution Suck-up bill. The House appears to be a lost cause when it comes to common sense, so I just emailed the following to my senators on the cusp of the Senate vote on S3295 -- the DISCLOSE Act:

Dear Senators Vitter and Landrieu:

I know you never read these things or even care about what your
constituents think, but please be aware -- we remember, we contribute to
campaigns, and we vote.

Therefore, please vote against S3295, the "DISCLOSE Act." We are so very tired of stealth legislation, especially legislation that, when studied in the light of day, crushes individual liberties, such as political speech.

We're also so very tired of unequal treatment -- especially when unions are the beneficiaries.

We're frankly just fed up with Congress as a whole. So, if you'd like to affect the
anti-incumbent tide, show us something positive -- something like standing up for your constituents' right to engage in political speech. Vote AGAINST the DISCLOSE Act.

Most Very Sincerely, MoogieP

The DISCLOSE Act -- "Democracy Is Strengthened By Casting Light On Spending in Elections." Holy. Moly. Is anyone else as tired of tortured acronyms as I am?!?!

Or as fed up with Congress? I CALL FOR FRUIT BASKET TURNOVER TODAY!!!!!!! Why wait 'til November.

Saturday's Stolen Video Confirms the "Relevance" of the U.N.

Yet another confirmation that the U.N. is a powerful, awe-inspiring organization.




And, once again, those inclined to believe the U.N. still has any relevance or influence in this world should inquire of Moogie about the excellent beachfront property she has for sale in New Mexico. Cheap.

Stolen from Moonbattery.

Quite a becoming rendering of Madame Nappy, don't you think?

Of course, her dogma's the same as the real thing.

Unfortunately for us.

Beware of Hitchhikers!

Just another day in southeast Louisiana -- petroleum fumes occasionally wafting through the spring breeze to compete with the fragrance of gardenia and jasmine on our block, and an unexplained sick headache nagging at me for days.

Then, I meet this guy.

As I parked at the neighborhood mom-'n-pop grocery yesterday and glanced in the side mirror to check for thugs sneaking up on me (not really -- I just have a habit of checking all my mirrors before shifting into park. I'm not sure why -- maybe it is a subliminal thug-confounding thing!), this little guy popped his head up and said, "Hi there!" He rode home with me, catching the breeze on the side mirror.

I'm told by a Baton Rouge school-teacher Facebook friend that he's a Tussock Moth Caterpillar. He's colorful and has funny nodules on his back. He appears to have two large feathery antennae and something long and feathery springing from his rear end. Oddly, he didn't appear to have stinging spines like Mr. Buckmoth Caterpillar. I was apparently wrong.

He was just comical, the way he appeared to be listening to me, waving those feathery antennae around -- he made me smile, but something told me not to invite him to crawl around on my hand like I would invite an Arkansas woolly-booger.

Pepper tried to ootch him onto a dollar bill so he could put him safely into the jasmine on the phone pole. But, the little guy slipped, fell onto the pavement, and scurried under the car.

Now, after looking him up, I kinda hope he fried on the pavement under the car! It appears that up-close-and-personal contact with Mr. Tussock Moth Caterpillar's feathery plumage can cause quite a number of unpleasant symptoms in human beings, including poisoning. And he and his kin can pretty much defoliate a tree without breaking a sweat!

Moral of the story -- #1: for all the fun and culture it has to offer, southeast Louisiana is a very dangerous place!

And, #2: always listen to that little voice in your head that warns you about picking up strangers, no matter the species.