In the old days, Shirt, people knew their neighbors, and realized the necessity of getting along, even if they didn’t like each other. These days people don’t take the time to even learn what their neighbors look like, much less what their names are.

Ellroon, too many police officers are using weapons as their first resort, not their last and don’t seem to be very concerned about the possibility of harming bystanders. Even if the individual who was the target was a real threat, you shouldn’t shoot at them in a crowd. [Yes, I have had that dance quite often.)

I never noticed that file type, until you mentioned it, Steve. I’m glad you escaped dousing, although Houston had a tough week.

I love it when a cat does that, as long as I’m not carrying a stack of dishes. Viewing the video made me think of the word “catwalk”; in turn, I was soon humming along on behalf of the beautiful black cat: “I’m… too sexy for my hair… too sexy for my hair… so sexy I’m there…”

I’m using the current Firefox, and the GIFv was not particularly quick to load. Perhaps only the first one in a browser session is slow while it loads a player; I’ll experiment.

BTW, the residents of Our House are NOT under water! At one point, I wasn’t so sure we’d get through the event without flooding, but we did.

And Bryan, thought of you with this: http://i.imgur.com/0DmEWRN.gifv

Having grown up in the cesspools of Orange County (moved there when Ike was the POTUS) I can tell you it wasn’t always that way. When the Daily pilot ran a story about my immigrant family we woke up with our driveway flooded with donations; the neighbors came out and helped organize things while we gawked.
(couldn’t even speak the language) That’s the Orange County I’d like to remember. I don’t know how or when or why we began to fear each other.

I wish I could say the same about the cream puff princesses who are our current police officers, but they seem so scared of the people they’re supposed to be policing that it’s hard to have any respect for them at all. Not at all like the big Irish and Polish cops of my youth, who were violent bruisers who had their own problem with administering “street justice” but definitely were *not* scared of the people they were dealing with and would have sooner died of shame than admit fear of anything at all. But those were days when men were men and had big brass ones that clanged when they walked and where even if you didn’t like them, you damn well respected their ability to handle themselves and to mete out whatever violence they felt was warranted. Today… not so much. Maybe we need to equip police cruisers with fainting couches nowadays? Sigh.