Only if I want to die

A few years ago, we bought a vest and leash for our cat, with the idea that she’d be able to play outside, supervised. She tries to escape at every opportunity, so we thought she’d like that. It was a nightmare. She was shape-shifting and twisting and clawing and yowling to escape, and ended up pulling a Houdini, getting out of it, and leaping in a single bound onto the roof of our house. We immediately gave up on trying ever again. You can imagine what I think of this idea for a Halloween Spider Costume for Dogs, Cats.

No way. Nope. That would not be cute. It would be more like a scene from John Carpenter’s The Thing, and for more versimilitude, it would be my guts spilled over the scene.

Although…I wonder if the large size would fit me?

P.S. If anyone has a similar spider costume for their pet, send me a photo and I’ll post them for Halloween.

Happy #Arachtober! Or is it?

That’s right, #Arachtober is a thing with swarms of people posting photos of their fave spiders this month. It doesn’t seem quite right to me, because October is a sad month for spiders in Minnesota — I’m seeing them fading away as the weather cools and their prey declines and we approach the terrible frost and frigid winter. Here’s Jenny By-The-Front-Door, for instance.

I’ve been checking on her every day. She’s not very active; she’s huddled in her nest cobbled out of dead leaves and debris, and I can see her legs peeking out, and if I poke at the nest with my finger, she’ll slowly wave at me, but she’s nowhere near as busy as the spiders are in the warm summer months. I expect that one of these days I’ll give her a little poke and she won’t respond. She’ll either be in diapause or dead.

I still have lots of thriving spiders in the climate controlled environment of my lab, at least!

I wouldn’t want to be in Collin Peterson’s shoes right now

I get quoted in this article on our local Democratic representative, Collin Peterson, although it may not be obvious, since of course they misspelled my name. Peterson is one of the few Democrats in the House who is reluctant to proceed with impeachment. This is where I live.

Western Minnesota’s Seventh Congressional District backed Trump over Hillary Clinton by 31 points in the last presidential election. No House Democrat nationwide represents a district with a wider Trump margin. It was the Republican’s biggest percentage of all eight Minnesota districts, higher even than in Rep. Tom Emmer’s Sixth District.

Peterson’s winning margins have shrunk the last few elections: from 26% in 2012 to 4% last year.

Yeah, this county is a brilliant shade of ruby red, and he’s a blue dog Democrat limping along by being a strong supporter of agricultural interests. He is awful in so many ways, but he is a cog used to help maintain Democratic leadership. I was one of those 4% last year, only because I am compelled to support a lackluster party in opposition to an evil insane party. And the thing is, he knows it!

In an interview in June, Peterson said his success in a strong Trump district had improved his standing with fellow House Democrats. While he differs with his party on many issues, he said he had a good working relationship with Pelosi, who understands the politics of his district. Peterson also explained his ready reply to DFLers from his district unsettled by his conservative bent. “I’m the best you’re going to get.”

Isn’t that a wonderful recommendation? “Settle for me, because as worthless as I am, everyone else is worse.”

I think he’s doomed. No matter what the consequences of an impeachment fight, whether it energizes Democrats or Republicans, he’s going to be chewed up in the middle.

Master Grifter

All I need to see is this one Facebook post to know that Joshua Feuerstein is trolling as part of his grift.

The clues are all right there.

  • He’s invoking the name of Greta Thunberg. She probably hasn’t the slightest idea who this guy is, but his right wing followers hate her. This’ll get their attention, but not hers.
  • He’s “offering” $100,000 to her preferred charity. I’d be surprised if he had it, since he’s nothing but an ex-preacher running a pretend ministry out of his house, probably as a tax dodge. It’s part of the con artist’s illusion of being rich already.
  • He’s asking for a debate. He doesn’t say what the debate is about, nor does he have any competencies that would qualify him to argue about much of anything. In fact, he’s a bit of a cipher — there’s no information about his educational background anywhere that I could find. He’s a guy who rants, nothing more.
  • I repeat, he wants a debate. It’s taken me a while, but I’ve come to realize that a demand for a debate is the first sign of an ignorant wanker looking for attention.
  • He wants an hour long televised debate. He has no clout with or appeal to any network. What’s he going to do, sit in his car and yell on YouTube to convince CBS or Netflix to give him an hour of their time?
  • He’s at the stage of begging his followers to share his demands. The kinds of pathetic angry evangelical Christians who pay attention to Joshua Feuerstein aren’t going to have any clout either.
  • He links to a whole string of media outlets as if they’re going to pay any attention to him. It’s all for show.
  • He includes a photo of Thunberg looking angry in contrast to what he apparently thinks is a good photo of him, where he’s looking incisive or something. Nope. The whole effect is ruined by the weirdly affected way he has his stubble trimmed, and that greasy hair shaped into a point. That’s what a yokel thinks a yuppie looks like.
  • He knows he can post an attention-grabbing offer of $100,000 because he will never have to pay it out — he’s a nobody making wild demands that he is certain can’t be met, but it sure looks great to the rubes. There’s a long history of creationists offering large sums of money for ‘proof’ of evolution that they rig so they never have to pay out, and this is the same thing.

Feuerstein has nothing to offer except that he’s willing to accept the publicity of a debate with a famous person. Excuse me, I meant “debate” — a thing he has reduced to a mindless shouting match with a teen-ager.

Big Spunk makes babies!

Yesterday, as we were traveling, we made a stop at a rest area to look for spiders, as one does. It was a terrible day for spider-kind, with intermittent rain and constant mist and cold, so it was mostly a fruitless search. I did find one sad, bedraggled looking Parasteatoda clinging to the underside of a handrail, with a fat drop of water beading up on her tattered web, and she fled as soon as my camera lens nudged in her direction. Just to make her day even worse, I then scooped up a couple of egg sacs she had in her nest, stealing her babies to bring back to the lab.

This morning as I grabbed the vial of sacs from the Big Spunk rest area to bring in to work, I noticed that they had hatched out! Baby spiderlings everywhere! They were probably triggered by being brought in to a nice warm house.

If someone is passing by Big Spunk today, could you stop in and tell their mama that her babies have found a good home, and we’ll take care of them? Probably more of these will survive here than they would in a drizzly empty wilderness where even the mosquitos weren’t flying.

I’ve got two tickets to the Trump rally next week!

Our President is holding another campaign rally (doesn’t he have important things to do? Like golfing some more?) on 10 October, in Minneapolis. So I reserved my tickets right away. I sure hope nothing comes up that Thursday, like classes maybe, or a spider eruption, or a little indigestion, to prevent me from filling that seat. We’ll see.

Mary wants to protest the visit, but there may be some personal conflicts with that, since she’s also flying off to Texas to spend time with her favorite grandson.

I guess we’ll just have to let the Minneapolis mayor speak for us.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat, declared Trump an unwelcome visitor.

“Under ordinary circumstances, it would be an honor to welcome a sitting president of the United States to Minneapolis and to showcase all our city has to offer on the national stage,” Frey said in a statement Thursday. ”But these aren’t ordinary circumstances. Since taking office President Trump’s actions have been reprehensible and his rhetoric has made it clear that he does not value the perspectives or rights of Minneapolis’ diverse communities.”

Frey added, “While there is no legal mechanism to prevent the president from visiting, his message of hatred will never be welcome in Minneapolis.”

Trump Go Home.