Odo was eleven years old. My wife bought him for me in 1995 as a small kitten, when we’d only been dating for about a year. He was my best furry buddy and a very unusual cat.
    A sweetheart, a loving fellow who wanted to be friends with everyone and enjoyed being played with no matter how you wanted to do it. Back flips? He was game. Swing him round in a bag? Sounded like fun to Odo.
    He was a loyal companion who came running when I called him, even if he had been sleeping in his favorite place. He slept under the sheets next to me, curled up in a ball or draped across me. He sat on the edge of the tub and batted at the rivulets of water from outside the curtain while I showered.
    He was a clumsy, clownish oaf. He’d never even once in his life clawed or bit anyone. Happy-go-lucky, but quite the back-talker when scolded, he’d retreat muttering from a scolding to work his aggressions out on his latest scratching post.
    As a young cat he taught himself to pee in the human toilette, which sounded clever until he started peeing in his water dish and then in the chrome burner cups of my electric stove. But that’s a story for later. Please, understand you will be subjected to at least one or two more posts about Odo, his life and his death.
    You’ll probably not be interested, but its something I need to do. I miss Odo.

    This is the 400th post for the SafeTinspector blog. A certain number of the preceding 399 posts were merely announcements and the last month or two have been a joint effort between Arthbard and myself. That leaves the lion’s share of the posts for which I continue to feel deep and abiding shame and regret. Read on to learn why–and how!–I intend to continue this longstanding tradition of uncomfortable twitching.

A lady working at a mental health agency I frequent (in a professional capacity, I assure you) once confided in me that she routinely carried several dozen condoms and an equal number of dildos in her purse.     Apparently she is responsible for training women on the safe use of condoms, penises and sex toys. Until that moment, I’d never really thought about the hygiene implications of sharing sex toys. But I was told that any disease a penis can carry can also hitch a ride on a semi-firm shaft of electric blue translucent polyurethane.     It was then that I remembered my teenage years, during which I frequented an Italian barber (in a professional capacity, I assure you) to polish my flat-top. Vito kept his combs squeaky clean, and this memory provided me with the following ideal solution for toy sanitation.      After removing your dildo from whichever oriface it might currently be lodged within, simply place it in a jar of Barbicide for no less than ten minutes before reuse1.     Problem solved, and thank you SafeTinspector!

I’m a heavy-set fellow, and I’ve finally figured out why people prefer thin humans for mates and friends over fat people. Its a matter of softness.     People are like like hair. When you group a bunch of thick, course humans together and then stroke them with your hand like a kitty-cat, you find that the group feels like wool, or perhaps a berber carpet.     But when you group a bunch of thin, wispy people together they become fur. Very soft when you run your hands through them, like a silky-haired guinnea pig or well-brushed persian cat.     Next time you see a bunch of thin people standing close to one another, run over and rub across the top of them with your face or arms and marvel at how soft and cuddly the crowd is.

    This is the third week that my laptop has been running SUSE Linux 10.1, and its quite nice, especially the amazing XGL 3-D desktop.
    Linux is a community-based operating system, although SUSE is a corporate product currently owned by the venerable networking software company, Novell². We here at SafeTinspector are excited to be on the periphery of the Linux movement. Speaking of community movements, meet the talented people behind SafeTinspector:

Happy 400th from the SafeTinspector staff and family

    We all hope you enjoyed the 400th post of SafeTinspector (with ArthBard, a loosely affiliated rival group operating out of Sandusky, Ohio. Fuck them.) Come back any time.

1 – For speed and convenience, you may want to keep a rotation of several sex toys in the Barbicide jar at all times.
2 – SafeTinspector is ashamed to admit to being one of the last Novell experts in Southeast Michigan. Every day brings my value closer to that of a Taco Bell assistant night-manager’s helper.

    Dear SafeTinspector, my neighbor’s dog bit my husband’s hand and badly injured it. Even though they promised to help pay for the hospital bills, they have not. What should I do?
        Sincerely,
        Sherry Giggles¹

    Gods, what a frustrating situation. I think we’ve all been there before. Here’s how you handle it.

   Visit your local pound and volunteer for cleaning duty. Hide a few pounds of dog poop somewhere on your person–I recommend ziplock bags under a pair of baggy pants. On the way home, buy a two-by-four, a set of barbeque skewers, a hack-saw, some construction paper, and one permanent marker.

    That night, after your neighbors go to sleep, take the shit and smear it all over their car windows and also put a little in their mailbox. But save a few ounces for later!

    Wait until morning. Watch their house carefully. They should eventually come out and see what you’ve done. As soon as you see them reacting to the dog crap, run up behind them with the two-by four and cave in the back of their skulls as quickly as possible.

    Position them on the front lawn in a humorous cross-shaped formation and stuff the remainder of the dog crap into their mouths and down their pants.

   Use the hack-saw to chop off their left hands and immediately impale them on the end of the barbeque skewers. Stick the other end of the skewers into the dirt by their feet so that the hands are sticking up in the air jauntily.
    Use the permanant marker and write on the construction paper, “Hi! We’re the Poop Eaters. Thanks for Stopping By!” Do this twice.
    Put these signs in the hands, making sure they are readable from the street.

    Now don’t you feel better?

1 – The real story might just be found on some other blog entirely.

She just wants to cut your hair

    Hooters, the American chain of restaurants famous for crop-tops and hot-pants, has finally spawned a logical successor. Why did it take so long to give scissors to the hot chicks?
    First, lets talk about Hooters. Hooters was a stroke of genius. Make a bunch of shitty chicken, serve some watered down beer and questionable oysters, charge a premium and trust that you’ll never run out of business thanks to your not-so-secret double-barreled marketing weapons. Everything tastes better when served in hotpants. Are they good waitresses? As long as they’re good looking who gives a crap? Look at boobs, eat foods¹.
    In the Detroit area a franchise of hair salons employing the same brilliant concept as Hooters has begun opening locations with alarming frequency. These are Lady Jane’s Barbershops. The corporate web site seems to be down for the moment, (http://www.ladyjanebarbershop.com/) but if you need your hair shortened, and don’t mind sporting an erection whilst sitting in front of a lady wielding hinged cutlery, Lady Jane’s offers a compelling, unique and, above all, bankable experience. Are the stylists good at cutting hair? If I can alternately watch ESPN and gaze appreciatively at the cleavage of a young lady at the same time then I might not be so picky about my coiffure. Look at butts, get hair cuts², right?

     Sex will sell any service, even when sex isn’t the actual service in question. Heck, put sexy ladies in anti-sex public service ads and abstinence will soon be as popular as Dancing with the Stars. Masturbation even more-so. With this in mind I’ve got a few ideas to share with the world. Feel free to try any of these out, I won’t request royalties.

    Bean Cunters Accounting Agency - They use the latest tax software, and they prove to be just as morally loose as they are fiscally conservative. You may not pass your next audit, but it’ll damn well have been worth it. Carry the one, baby!

    Melons Massive Head Trauma Response Centers – A chain of neurosurgery centers staffed entirely by chikas calientes. Credentials be damned, you’ll be repeatedly beating yourself in the head with an aluminum baseball bat just for the chance to get phrenologized by a busty young pre-med. Or even a busty ex-Denny’s waitress who merely claims to be a pre-med. It doesn’t matter; titties make any injury easier to cope with. Learn to walk all over again while lear

    Bang My Cans Trash Collectors - They smell ripe, they look all smudgy, they aren’t physically capable of lifting so much as a full bag of kitchen scraps–in fact, you’ll likely end up having to clean up after them–but the fact that their bare, grease-smudged breasts are perky in the autumn air makes it all completely groovy.

    Frankly Furters Contract Consumers - With but a single phone call a pretty young lady will come directly to your home or place of business and eat a meal in front of you. That’s it. My best idea yet! If you give her a nice tip, she might even dribble barbecue sauce on her t-shirt–no touching!

    Preach-A-Licious Gospel Gang – Ordained and anything but ordinary, these hotties will preach the gospel of Jesus’ salvation while bringing all their assets to the table–or should I say alter? You’ll go to hell with a smile, you sinning bastards. Open wide to receive the Host!

    The Smiling Dead Funeral Home and River of the Dead Outfitters – This ethnic-themed chain of super sexy undertakers will embalm your dead relatives while wearing absolutely nothing but a strategically knotted plastic hose filled with formaldehyde. As an added bonus, they pose naked above the corpse of your loved one for the precise amount of time proscribed by Osirus prior to plunging their red-hot, razor-sharp daggers of Krullkrull into their sternum, thus releasing their soul to Anubis and the great beyond. And you get to watch! Boner!

    Universe Exploders Nude Destructionettes – These hot chicks trigger the complete destruction of all mankind and the cosmos itself with their sheer hotness. Galaxies collapse, darken and snuff out with a satisfied whimper. Nothing remains except the sexy. This has happened multiple times before, we just can’t remember it due to the intervention of the…

    Erotic Universe Erectors – Sporting an assortment of multidimensional, cosmic strap-ons, these incredibly sexy women bump, grind, and pout suggestively and, through the continuous and perky-nippled process of cosmic breast emanation, restore reality following each manifestation of the Destructionettes. Twice monthly the Erectors and the Destructionettes will stage an erotic display of entropy defying mutual pleasuring. An event not to be missed but, by the vagarities of time-stream manipulation, soon to be forgotten.

    Eternal Dildo Celestial Warehouse – A storeroom existing just beyond the edge of tomorrow, holding nothing but assorted transcendant sex toys, and staffed by just about the hottest, barely-legal teens and pre-op transexuals which will ever coexist with our paniverse, who just want to

1 – Not really their slogan. I made it up. I got a million of ‘em. Look at Tits, Eat Shits. Look at Ass, Fry a Bass. Ogle girls, massage squirrels. Flirt with skirts, ketchup on your shirt. Uh… stalk a waitress, soak your matress?*

* – A million of them! I admit NOTHING!

    There was an election a couple of days ago. I’m sure you noticed. I mean, you all voted, right? … Right?
    Assuming you said yes, and assuming that you voted someplace in South Carolina, Arizona, Idaho, Colorado, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, and/or Wisconsin, you might have noticed an innocuous little amendment concerning the proper definition of the word “marriage.”
    Right-wingers have been fighting homosexuals for years. They fear a series of homosexual events starting with gay marriage and ending with the gay collapse of society. Here’s a detailed breakdown:

1. Marriage of gay people.
2. ???
3. Collapse of society.

    Okay, so a lot of liberals complain that step two has yet to be rigidly defined, but I mean, c’mon. That’s nitpicking. Stop dwelling on it.
    Strangely enough, the right-wingers have had difficulty making their case to non-right-wingers. Religious arguments fail because, well, the founding fathers stupidly put an amendment in the Constitution creating a Separation of Church and State. Good one, founding fathers! This would have been so much easier if you guys hadn’t had the idiotic notion that people of different beliefs should receive equal treatment. Bastards!
    Moral arguments, on the other hand, fail because, well, some reasonable people fail to see the moral dilemma. Gay people get married and, shock and horror, not-gay people go on about their everyday, not-gay lives as usual. Doesn’t actually seem to hurt anyone.
    Legal arguments go nowhere. Without religion and moral crises, there seems little basis to justify the passing of an actual law.
    But right-wingers are a clever lot, always on the lookout for loopholes. Take creationism. Can’t teach it in the classroom? No problem. Call it “Intelligent Design,” pretend it’s a science, and have another go at it. It’s not religion anymore. It’s a science. Based on … You know, scientific sciences and junk. So, it’s okay to teach in public schools now, Right?
    So how to halt this dreadful “attack” on marriage? Easy. If an effective argument can’t be made on a religious, moral, or legal level, then modify it into an issue about … Vocabulary!
    That’s right. They’re no longer trying to persecute gay people. They’re not forcing their own religious opinions onto the public at large. No, now they’re simply protecting the definition of the word from being altered. It isn’t that they’re hateful toward homosexuals, its just that homosexuality is technically incompatible with the word “marriage.”
    Its all about the lexicography, baby!
    And, no, it is not at all ironic that President Bush, of all people, is suddenly really concerned about the nation’s grammar. He has good reason, after all. You can’t have people going around changing the definitions of words willy-nilly. I mean … Ignore the fact that the definition of the word marriage varies wildly from place to place and culture to culture–not to mention that even within our society it depends greatly on what dictionary you happen to be looking at in the first place–it’s still … Y’know … Important and stuff. Old definitions are better. They should never change. With this in mind, I would like to reiterate a previously-voiced desire that we should all go back to using the word “faggot” to talk about bundles of sticks. It’s only fair.
    But why stop, there? I say we take the language way back, and go all Canterbury Tales, man. I can’t wait for the amendment to change the spelling of “field” back to “feeld”!

On a non-satirical postscript for any homosexuals who happen to be reading: I’m very sorry that the so-called “marriage amendment” passed in my state. For what it’s worth, I voted against it. I did my part, man! So, I dunno … Maybe you need better marketing?
    Anyway, better luck next time there’s an amendment targeting your people.

    For someone who once based his ethics upon a religious imperative, morality presents unique challenges. How do you judge right and wrong when you don’t have a big beard in the sky dispensing irrefutable declaratives? Is there really anyone with the authority to state that what I do is wrong or right? Don’t worry, SafeT isn’t contemplating murder Dostoevsky style, he’s the same nice guy you’ve come to know and love. Perverse and perverted, yes, but no danger to himself or others.
    I believe that most people wander through life doing things that they think are right or wrong based on rules of behavior and emotional predilections with little thought as to the root truth of what is right or wrong about the choices they make. Others might think that, perhaps, laws and society are dictating right and wrong. But fear of retribution is rarely the true moral motivation we operate under. How many times were you thinking about the relevant statutes when deciding on a course of action? What of actions you take that aren’t governed by law, such as monogamy and truthfulness?

    I’m not covering any new ground here, although it is somewhat new for me specifically. I graduated from high school with a 1.9 GPA and have only a handful of community college credits to my name. I find that my wetware is relatively capable, but applying it has always been a challenge for me. So the internet becomes my classroom to a certain extent. I found this article from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy to be interesting. I also became fascinated with the implications of this Taco Bell Nutritional Guide.

    From the Stanford article I reacquainted myself with the organ transplant moral quandry, from Taco Bell I learned that a bean burrito, if ordered “fresco style”, is really not bad for you at all by fast food standards. First, the organ transplant.

    Lets start with the following implausible situation. There is a group of five people in peril beneath a large, suspended weight. When the weight falls, as it surely will, they will die. There is a single person who is standing under another suspended weight, but this person is not in any danger. You are in possession of a button which will cause the first weight to be rendered harmless while releasing the second weight, killing the single person. What do you do?

• Press the button, saving five people while killing the one.
• Do nothing, allowing the five people to die while leaving the single person unharmed.
• Join the five people under their weight and lead them all in a spirited round of singing “We Shall Overcome” in order to lift their spirits just before they–and you–die a horrible crushing death.

    It is very tempting to press the button, eh? Go ahead, its hypothetical anyway. Whatever button you currently have your hand on is not likely to hold the power of life or death. If you’re lucky, the button you are going to press will result in an audible beep. I like beeping.

    So lets change the situation a bit, and introduce you to the organ transplant scenario. There are five people who have recently been attacked by a maniac. Each has a different damaged organ without which he or she will die within a few hours. Heart, lungs, liver, etc.
    You are a gifted organ transplant surgeon who is faced with the sad task of overseeing their inevitable death due to a chronic shortage of organs. A man walks into the emergency room with a vicious hangnail, but he is otherwise healthy. As the amazing surgeon you are, you know that harvesting the requisite organs from this man will result in his death, but will certainly save all of the injured patients. Do you…

• Kill the mostly-healthy man, harvest his organs and save the victims.
• Fix the man’s hangnail and let the victims die.
• Read the hangnail patient a collection of Emily Dickensen and T.S. Eliot poems while listening to the Cure’s Disintegration continuously until the man offers you his organs of his own free will.
  • He may even offer to kill himself with a sharpened soup spoon. This would be considered a bonus point.

    This second scenario is actually the same as the first in that we are faced with the choice of murdering someone to save five others. No matter how many people are saved as a result of murder, it is still murder and wrong… by most people’s accounts.

    But while all of this is interesting, and that Stanford article goes into more depth and explores many approaches to address the question of morality, I’m still left with a disturbing murkiness as far as what is and what isn’t good. Why would either possible outcome be good… or bad? No matter what rule I or the various referenced thinkers cited by the Stanford article come up with to justify my decision, is it not merely a rationalization of a choice I’ve already made? I think that’s enough out of me for now, I’ll talk more on it later. I welcome your comments, suggestions and questions.

    Hey, lookit Sam in her cute widdle cowgirl outfit! Yes, peoples it was a Halloween yesterday night, and with that comes Trick-Or-Treating.
    Just in case you don’t celebrate Halloween where you are and, perhaps, aren’t up to date on the minutiae of American culture, here’s a refresher:

    On Halloween, the physically immature offspring of common Americans don elaborate costumes and beg for candy from their neighbors in a practice intended to inculcate one another to the vagarities of homeless life, thereby instilling fear of failure and a strong academic/work ethic in the next generation.

    On a related note, yesterday I witnessed an enormously obese woman wearing a bright green witch costume riding one of those electric senior scooters down a side street near my office. I didn’t have my camera, and it would have been awkward to have pulled up next to her and started snapping pictures.

Me: “Yeah, baby! Woo-woo, witchy-poo! Over here! Yeah, that’s it, big girl!”
Large witch on Amigo: “That’s genuinely hurtful. I hate you.”

    You know, overweight witch upon a three-wheeler, you’re right. I’m sorry for mocking you. Queen sized witches need to get around too, and they shouldn’t let the gout or bad knees get in their way. I’m a bad person, really.
    As a palate cleanser, here’s another picture of Sam! Now don’t you feel better about my insensitivity? I know I do. Having a cute daughter goes a long way toward justifying my own shortcomings. We handed out candy, used sidewalk chalk to draw pictures of creatures getting run over by the cars in the driveway, and tromped around the subdivision collecting sucrose specimens.
    I went out dressed as a slightly overweight white man with short hair. I brought the family dog along to cement the bourgeois imagery and make it extra gritty and real. But ah, what might have been. I, too, could have been a cowgirl.