Elise Sereni Patkotak

I am always highly amused when I read letters to the editor in the local paper in which some yahoo points out that we could not publicly complain or criticize our government if we were in Iraq and so we shoudl shut up and support whatever the administration wants to do. And I think to myself, “But isn’t that the point?” Alas, that kind of nuance is lost on the letter writers.

God made turn signals on cars in order to allow the driver of car one to let the drivers of cars two through ad infinitum know that he or she was planning to turn onto a street or into a different lane. This is not a hard concept. Putting your turn signal on when you are already halfway into the other lane is plain stupid.  Most of the cars around you already get what you are planning to do and are cursing you silently under their breath for not signaling in advance.  Putting your turn signal on at that point

Well, I visited my dentist for my annual exam this week and, in a tremendous break with recent tradition in my health care, nothing was wrong.  Talk about a freak occurence…me, going into a health professional’s office and coming out with no new diseases, problems, aches, disabilities or need for more medication or surgery. I guess miracles do happen.

Those of you who read this blog regularly know that Best Friends is where I want to go when I’m old. It’s the largest no kill animal shelter in America and it is a magical place of kindness and love and joy for many animals who had precious little of that before their arrival at Best Friends.

Anyhow, Best Friends is looking for donations of items like blankets, towels, old pet beds, kitty scratching posts, toys for birds or dogs or cats that your loved and lucky pets no longer use…anything like that. They could also use packages of Pill

So the headlines say Bush is turning his eyes towards Latin America. Some would say he’s doing that to distract attention from the Mideast. All I know is that if I were Latin America, I’d be very, very nervous.

My first thought on hearing that Dick Cheney had a blood clot in his leg was that I hope he had to go to Walter Reed and wait in line with our vets while the bureaucracy shuffled him around and then, when he finally got to care, it was substandard.  And actually, I don’t really care if that makes me a horrible person. 

I’m pretty sure that if I die, my dog Blue will be sad.  But first she will carefully check all around my body and nudge her nose under my body to ascertain that I didn’t spit up some food as I fell to the floor or didn’t have any on me when I passed.  If she finds even one crumb, her sadness will lift because she’ll know my death was not in vain if it provided her another morsel or scrap of anything even vaguely resembling food.

This dog simply must have some Italian in her. Food cures all for

Is there anything scarier for those poor people hit by tornadoes last week than to have Bush show up to tell them he’s sending FEMA in to help them? They’d be better off with more tornadoes.

I can’t believe they finally buried that Smith woman and no one, absolutely no one, even remotely famous bothered to show up.  Gee, what could that mean? Could it be that even the luridly famous have some bottom line of taste and discretion they will not cross?  Or did Hugh Hefner fear if he showed that he would be looking in the mirror of his future with his 27 year old fiancee? Or maybe, just maybe, this woman was not worth the free air she’s been given almost nonstop for the past few weeks.  TV has once again risen to