As I’ve been nursing a sore throat all day, I haven’t accomplished much. Well, except for, since I really couldn’t do anything else, backing up every single photo I’ve taken since 2002, except for the ones I lost in the HD crash (and those may yet be recovered). I already had most of them on CD, but I figure you can’t have too many backups. Then I decided to finally put on all the Windows updates I’ve been putting off. SP3 is now on, and it didn’t crash my computer. Pays to wait. (Yes, I backed up before I updated, Nervous Nellies.)

Looking at the old pictures of Tig the Second brought back memories. I may have to bring some of those pics out of storage. Wow, what a belly he had. Meantime, we have the latest pictures of Tig and Gracie.

Gracie is a creature of habit. She has her routines, and she likes them. They are written in stone. She will not come into the bed on the right-hand side, only the left. In fact, for two years in Montclair, she stopped sleeping in my bed completely because I switched the nighttable to the other side, and moved myself to the right side of the bed instead of the left. The left was her side. I found that out when I moved to Richmond, and switched back to the other side of the bed. I was suddenly a two bedcat household again.

This is Gracie’s newest spot.

I see her upstairs all the time. She likes to poke her head through the rail and look down at me. Cats like being up high. The better to jump down and eat you with (they really do think they’re as big as tigers).

Tig couldn’t be any more different than Gracie. His spot is near me. And he likes shelves. Every day as I work in my office, he finds a spot and sacks out (when he isn’t driving me crazy by, say, biting my feet, like he’s doing now). This was his favorite spot. He can’t have it any more. I put books in it.

His new spot is behind the books on the bottom shelf of a different bookshelf. He knocks over a bunch of books on the way in or out. It’s where he hid from the cleaning crew. I see no hope in breaking him of this habit. Perhaps I should leave a space for him to go in and out instead of constantly having to pick up the books he’s knocked down.

Cats.

He guarantees it.

Go ahead. Vote for Obama. Because that’s what America needs, a weak leader in a time of a two-front war.

The pretend-moderate Iranian cleric (Snoopy’s been on the case here, here, and here) told his fellow America-haters to stop gloating about our financial crisis. Yeah, it really doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that as the West goes, so goes the less-developed world.

“We should not think the financial crisis that hit the world is in our interest and so on and express joy,” Rafsanjani, who heads a powerful clerical body, said in comments on state radio.

“It should not be that some say the crisis is very good for us and it is a miracle coming from God to punish them (the West),” said the cleric, who also said in September Washington was paying for its past policy mistakes.

“The first negative consequence of the wave is the fall in oil prices … The drop in oil causes major damage to us. We have to be alert and cooperate with each other to contain the negative results of the next wave coming from this tsunami.”

They’re sweating in Iran. Even Reuters is acknowledging that their budget requires much higher oil prices than the current ones.

Some economists say Iran, which a few years ago lived with oil around $20 to $25 a barrel, now needs $70 to $75 a barrel.

“That is the minimum the government needs in order to keep the government budget sustainable and not to withdraw reserves from the Oil Stabilization Fund which is already empty. There is no other reserve for the government,” said one Iranian economist, speaking before the latest oil price plunge.

The International Monetary Fund has said that to keep the current account in the black Iran needs more than $75 a barrel for its crude. Others say Tehran may need as much as $100.

Gee, maybe they should be expending all that effort in something other than obtaining a nuclear bomb—like finding something that the world wants to buy from Iran besides oil and rugs. (Can I get one of those flying ones? I’ve always wanted one of those.)

Don’t think this guy doesn’t qualify for the batshit crazy post of the usual Iranian nuttery. He’s accusing the U.S. of nuking Iraq during the first Gulf War. Watch them start using that the next time the U.S. tries to get Iran sanctioned by the UNSC over its nuke program.

By the way—the next time you hear so-called “moderate” is the one who said that Iran could absorb a nuclear blast, but Israeli couldn’t.

Rafsanjani said that Muslims must surround colonialism and force them [the colonialists] to see whether Israel is beneficial to them or not. If one day, he said, the world of Islam comes to possess the weapons currently in Israel’s possession [meaning nuclear weapons] - on that day this method of global arrogance would come to a dead end. This, he said, is because the use of a nuclear bomb in Israel will leave nothing on the ground, whereas it will only damage the world of Islam.

You should read the rest of that link. It’s chock-full of classic anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and the lie that Jews were better off as dhimmis in Muslim states than in Israel today.

Oil closed at $64.15 yesterday, up from the $62 mark, but still down far enough to be hurting Iran, regardless of whether they need $75 or $100/bbl pricing. And that’s great news.