Twanda Carlisle, seen here being targeted by a terrorist, tells the Post-Gazette:

That was yesteryear. In 2007, cats are more aggressive than they used to be.

Thank goodness there is finally someone who is willing to speak the truth about the meteoric rise in cat-related violence over the past few years. Once, cat gangs seemed quaint and mostly harmless, but younger felines keep pushing the envelope.

Dr. Dre’s seminal 1992 album The Chronic first drew America’s attention to rising cat on cat violence, fueled by an increased flow from post-Soviet Afghanistan of high-quality catnip, known on the street as “purr dust.” The problem was shunted to the side in favor of high-visibility campaigns against Dre’s “obscene” lyrics:

Who’s the man with the master plan?
A kitten with a motherf***ing gun

Congress only exacerbated the problem with the repeal of the Feline G.I. Bill as a budget balancing measure in early 2004. The result has been a flood of disaffected Felis silvestris catus in our streets, highly trained for combat but without prospects for education.

As a result, many of America’s felines, including decorated heroes of the Iraq war, have landed in prison or been forced into pornography or prostitution.

Despite the intervention of religious leaders, this problem has continued to grow. It is a good thing one of our elected officials is finally ready to step forward and deal with the gangs of criminal felines in our streets. After all, as Dr. Dre said in the follow up to The Chronic:

Mister Kitty Mittens got a shotgun
and he ain’t even strong enough to cock one
F*** tryin to job hunt
Kittens got AK’s, kittens is way crazier
than Dre was back in his N.W.A. days
Kittens spray strays and shoot without lookin

Thanks to Bram and the Burgher for writing about this earlier today.

Post-Gazette:

A salad left unattended in a bag under a restroom sink prompted the closing of the Grant Street entrance to the Allegheny County Courthouse and the evacuation of county Chief Executive Dan Onorato’s office for about an hour this afternoon.

Pittsburgh Police Officers pointed out that they did not immediately recognize the salad because it did not include steak or french fries.

Today’s attempt by Ruth Ann Dailey to ruin Harry Potter for everyone by pretending it is actually about her own favorite fictional character, Jesus Christ, contains this mind-boggling paragraph:

Not everyone in our social circle shares our enthusiasm. Some evangelical Christians reject J.K. Rowling’s books because they fear — pretty unreasonably, I think — that the books’ fictional world of witchcraft will desensitize impressionable young souls to the real, and destructive, thing.

That’s right: Ruth Ann Dailey thinks that witches are real. Not only that, but she is raising her children to believe the same thing.

If there has ever been a better argument for the confiscation at birth of the children of religious believers in general and evangelical Christians in particular, I haven’t seen it.

Another disturbing aspect to this: it is being discussed in Ruth Ann’s “social circle.” This means that there are other adults out there who are unembarrassed to sit around with their friends discussing the likelihood of a series of childrens’ novels tempting their progeny into deals with Satan, and no one among them with the brains to point out that witches, Satan and Jesus Christ ARE NOT REAL.

Seriously. It is the twenty-first century now.

Post-Gazette:

The Pittsburgh Civic Design Coalition will hold a forum for Pittsburgh mayoral candidates at 6 p.m. Sept. 27 at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, the group announced yesterday.

Mayor Ravenstahl, seen here getting a detailed explanation of precisely how his police record can now be erased from anywhere in the city, is already confirmed. Unless, of course, the weather is nice, in which case he will be golfing. You can’t waste these precious Thursdays, you know.

Mark DeSantis is also confirmed, which is not surprising, since he would prefer to debate every day between now and the election.

No word on whether Ryan the Butcher was invited, but you can be pretty sure that you, reader, were not. This event is architects only.

On the subject of Meatpacker Ryan Scott, represented here by a Memphis wide receiver of the same name, I called the Socialist Workers late last week to ask for information about their mayoral candidate. The guy in their office and bookstore took my name, phone number, and e-mail, and promised to get some information to me. It has been three days now, and still no word.

I think it is probably safe to assume he supports socialism, which would be an alternative to Mark DeSantis, and working, which would be an alternative to Luke Ravenstahl.

As we’ve heard before, our fair city and county continue to have a drunk driving problem. (I see the effects of this problem roll in on pretty much an hourly basis to the UPMC trauma bays.) It’s not surprising we have this problem — since public transit runs infrequently at the hours when most people are imbibing, it’s pretty difficult to get home without using a car, and taxi service can be erratic at the best of times.

I happened to pick up a New York Times while traveling this weekend, and found this story about Korea’s innovative solution: people who will come to where you are and drive you home in your own car. With a little tweaking (e.g., two-person driver teams using a motorcycle or small fuel-efficient two-seater so the drivers can quickly get to their next clients), I’d bet some local entrepreneur could make this concept work quite well in Pittsburgh…

Though the name sounds like any one of an assortment of characters you might find at your local Pittsburgh VFW, it’s actually the name of the world’s first computer virus.

Though it certainly wasn’t the first bit of malicious code (that title belongs to Creeper, which infected the Internet’s predecessor, ARPANET, and was never released into the wild), it was the first to be discovered in the wilderness of home computing, 25 years ago this month.

It didn’t do much damage to your Apple II. After 50 reboots, it displayed the following message:

Elk Cloner: The program with a personality

It will get on all your disks
It will infiltrate your chips
Yes it’s Cloner!

It will stick to you like glue
It will modify RAM too
Send in the Cloner!

Also, it only spread through disk-to-disk contact - you had to insert a floppy into a computer already infected with it. It almost seems kind of quaint.

Oh, and what connection does this have to Pittsburgh? The author of the virus, Rich Skrenta, was a student at Mt. Lebanon High School when he created Elk Cloner. He has gone on to success in the computer industry, and even maintains a blog of his own.

The Post-Gazette’s politics weblog reports:

Three years ago, Mr. Nader attempted to get on the Pennsylvania ballot to run for president. Democrats still smarting from his 2000 effort — which the party blames for Al Gore losing in Florida and Pennsylvania, ultimately costing him the presidency — were diligent about checking his nominating petitions for 2004 and went to court when they found more than two-thirds of the signatures were inadequate or fraudulent. In addition to keeping him off of the 2004 ballot, Democrats won a judgment of $81,102 against him to cover the costs for transcription fees and hand-writing analysts.

“Yes, I can afford it,” Mr. Nader told McClatchy, “but the necessity of a diversified electoral process can’t afford it.”

I volunteered to go through these petitions in 2004. What Ralph, seen here showing off his beer pong form, does not mention is that his petitions were not only blatantly fraudulent, but also circulated by the Republican party, supporters of a candidate who Nader frequently and loudly claimed not to be a spoiler for.

It is difficult for him to claim moral superiority over the two major parties when he willingly and enthusiastically accepted the help of one of those parties in a scheme to con the Commonweath of Pennsylvania. As the man ultimately responsible for this petition drive once said, “he can’t have it both ways. He can’t take the high horse and then claim the low road.”

On the other hand, Democrats really shouldn’t blame Nader for Gore’s losing Pennsylvania in 2000. It kind of seems like sour grapes when you hear things like this:

State Democratic Chairman T.J. Rooney said he’s happy attorneys will try to enforce the judgment.

“I think that’s great. You’re goddamned right he should pay, and he should go away, because he didn’t learn his lesson in 2000.”

Plus, the fact that Al Gore actually won Pennsylvania in 2000. Just a small point.

The Republicans finally, only a year and a half before the election, have a challenger to the hated Jason Altmire, the representative of our neighbors to the north, the 4th district.

After wild speculation of who might run, including rumors of an effort by Steelers hero and gubernatorial embarrassment Lynn Swann , the choice, almost a year before the primary election, seems to be Melissa Hart, seen here having accidentally wandered into the before and after segment of the infomercial for Redneck Noreen’s Cigarette and Hair Bleach Diet.

That is smart thinking by the Republicans. If you want someone who can win for you, who better than someone who was handed a humiliating defeat as a three-term incumbent with the strong financial and organizational help of her party by a somewhat gooberish hospital executive who had never held political office?

On the other hand, Altmire will be hard to beat, what with his tough record of protecting us from the recorded voices of politicians. Also, he joined with 55 of his colleagues to say that it would be nice if we paid people in the military more, you know, if the President wants to or whatever. Or not, that would be cool too.

Now, I kid, but really Jason, seen here showing off his lifelong and heartfelt (not hartfelt) Catholicism by “doing the Jesus,” has accomplished some things. Or, rather, one thing. Of the bills he has sponsored in the house, exactly one has passed. That is HRES 371 EH:

Whereas May 1 through 7, 2007, is observed as National Physical Education and Sports Week;

(3) encourages schools to offer physical education classes to students and work with community partners to provide opportunities and safe spaces for physical activities before and after school and during the summer for all children and youth.

It may not actually pay for sports, or encourage kids to participate in any way that they will ever hear about. It may not create a menu of healthy foods to guide schools, or give them direction on how to obtain healthy and sustainable sources of food. It may not identify the “social and environmental factors” that cause childhood obesity, or give guidance in how to avoid them. It may not provide for outreach to the most endangered communities, or direct a government agency to identify how to help them. Nonetheless, the intent is sort of there. If only Jason had been in Congress when I was a kid, I probably wouldn’t be the miserable, cranky, misanthropic, fat bastard I am now.

Some people might have wondered why Mayor Ravenstahl, a lifelong Democrat from a solidly Democratic family in a solidly Democratic town, would rip off a Republican president’s iconic campaign slogan.

There are those who would probably say that it is because he doesn’t care what anyone thinks. Others might argue that the Mayor’s brilliance transcends party. I would have been likely to chalk it up to the assumption I have encountered among politicians that the general public is much too stupid and apathetic to understand anything but punchy phrases and bright shiny colors.

Then, riding my bike from the Strip into Lawrenceville, the other day, I saw an historical marker, and nearly slapped myself over the forehead. It is not to Ike’s Republican presidency the Mayor intended to tie himself: it was to Pittsburgh’s industrial patriotism of the war years. A chicken in every pot and Eisenhower Grease for every driveshaft!

and go to Mexico to get tasty ideas. The Big Burrito newsletter is probably one of the best email newsletters I have ever seen. They July newsletter arrived in my email yesterday with an interesting topic. Bill Fuller, the Big Burrito chef, writes about his trip to Mexico with the head Mad Mex chef shares some recipes. Bill also writes that he reads blogs to learn about new things. Obviously I like blogs, and it is nice to learn that other cool people use them too.
If you don’t know about Mad Mex, you should - it is one of my most favorite places to eat ever - partly because the chefs buy local and use good food to make a tasty meal. While I have been lobbying Bill (and every server that has crossed my path) to bring back the chick pea pizza that has been off the Mad Mex menu for years, I am looking forward to seeing what new items arrive on the menu.