It is incumbent upon me, I think, that an explanation is forthcoming forthwith and with malice aforethought, what with everyone bitching about there being no cat pictures on my blog lately.

Hello, people, BUSY! BUSY! BUSY!

I finally actually have a life, and you may recall a little thing when I first started this blog about how the Sony is dead? Well, not really, just unable to boot. But that’s where my best photo editing program is. And please don’t tell me about all the nifty shareware/free programs I can use, because I have some on this system, and because I’m still BUSY! BUSY! BUSY! and, well, I’m far more interested in getting the actual posts and behind-the-scenes things going on the blog than I am pictures of Tig and Gracie. Although I am still taking many pictures of them, and have plenty to put up.

So if you will kindly all give me a chance to get my blog legs going (there isn’t even a link to Chris Muir’s Day By Day set up yet, which has to be fixed ASAP), I will get cat pictures up sooner or later. Probably this weekend. Because I’m BUSY! BUSY! BUSY! (Religious school has started too, that’s two jobs, and six days a week that are spent working on them.)

I’m doing my job. Are you doing yours? Are you linking? Are you posting comments? Are you sending your friends emails about the new blog? Are you telling me which parts of the blog need fixing?

Sorry, Rahel, but the cat pictures are going to wait. Please don’t take the tone of this post personally. I am sleep-deprived and should go to bed. I’m cranky. Yep. Cranky. But there is a cats category, and has been since the get-go. There just weren’t any posts in it. In fact, I have 34 categories at last count, excluding “Miscellaneous.”

Perhaps I’ll put up a new one for cranky posts.

The Carnival of the Jews, Haveil Havalim, is up.

So is the Carnival of the Cats.

They were both up yesterday, but I have been busy, busy, busy. I was in a room full of Jews last night, and while some may have been catty, there were no cats.

The cow song, she is no top 40.

Y’know, the only blog more depressing to read than mine is Omri’s.

I have decided that today is National Women’s Day.

No, there’s no particular reason.

I think tomorrow will be National Women’s day, too.

And the next day.

Any complaints will be taken under advisement, however, men can’t complain on National Women’s Day.

I may make this a permanent thing.

Once more, the palestinians are attaching conditions to stopping terror that do not even consider the fact that murdering civilians is a bad thing.

The Palestinian Authority will take all necessary steps to fight terror in Gaza provided Israel withdraws completely and gives hope there will be negotiations over a Palestinian state and more pullbacks from the West Bank, Palestinian National Security Adviser Jibril Rajoub told The Jerusalem Post.

I can’t remember why Rajoub’s name is hitting my memory chords, but I’m betting it has to do with terrorism. Here’s more of his asininity:

He rejected the notion that it was now up to the PA to take steps against its extremists after Israel leaves. “The Israeli withdrawal is positive, but should not be praised and rewarded; after all, Israel did what it is supposed to do according to international legitimacy – end the occupation of Gaza,” he said.

And the terrorists are supposed to do what they’re supposed to do according to “international legitimacy”—stop terrorism against Israelis.

I’m sorry, did I type that out loud? I should know better than to expect terrorists to understand what exactly the cessation of terror entails.

Mahmoud Abbas is busy making up lies to justify the destruction of the Gaza synagogues:

The Palestinian Authority and Hamas on Monday defended the decision to demolish the synagogues in the Gaza Strip, saying they did not want to give Jews an excuse to ever think about returning to the area.

PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas visited the former settlement of Dugit in the northern Gaza Strip, where he declared that the Israel did not leave behind any synagogues. “There are no synagogues here,” he said.

“Israel left behind some empty buildings which that are likely to collapse. All the public buildings they left are in danger of collapsing,” he said.

Then there’s the Hamas explanation:

Ismail Haniyeh, a senior Hamas official in the Gaza Strip, said his movement would not allow the synagogues to exist for fear that they would be turned in the future into “Wailing Walls” for Jews. “We won’t allow any Wailing Walls on our blessed land,” he said.

Defending the decision to raze the synagogues, Haniyeh said Israel was trying to keep them to put pressure on the PA to protect them in the future. “These synagogues were built for political, not religious, reasons. They were built illegally and should go away with the occupation.”

Oh. Political purposes, not religious. Because, like, it’s not like Jews worship in synagogues or anything like that.

Shyeah. Respect for other religions. In what universe?

The AP is still blaming Israel for leaving the synagogues to be burned by the pals (as if the most natural thing in the world is to burn synagogues), and now they have pictures!

And, oh yeah: It’s still Israel’s fault.

As they left their homes last month, the settlers took the sacred Torah scrolls from their synagogues, as well as prayer books and other holy items - symbolizing the end of the use of the buildings as houses of prayer.

Last year Israel’s Cabinet ruled the buildings would be torn down. Since the evacuation of the settlers, however, rabbis mounted a high-profile campaign to save the buildings, demanding the government see to it that they would be protected by the Palestinians or by international organizations. On Sunday, the Israeli Cabinet reversed itself, voting not to destroy the synagogue buildings.

The Palestinians refused to protect them, saying they wanted nothing that symbolized the occupation to remain. Early Monday, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said the structures would be dismantled like all the others.

“They left empty buildings that used to be temples, but they removed all the religious symbols, and they are no longer religious places,” he said.

The United States issued a statement criticizing the Israeli change of policy, complaining that it put the Palestinians in a position “where it may be criticized for whatever it does.”

And anyway, they weren’t really synagogues anymore, so it doesn’t matter, right? Right?

Say. Is there such a thing as an abandoned mosque? I understand the Buddhists and Muslims in India have been fighting over that concept for centuries.