Fluffy is an adorable, one-year-old female Abyssinian guinea pig looking for a loving guardian.

Fluffy was turned into Friends of Petraits Rescue after being purchased at a pet store with a male pig. She soon gave birth to babies and separated from the males.

Guinea pigs are happiest in pairs, and we’d love to see Fluffy find another female guinea pig to bond with.

Guinea pigs eat a diet of unlimited Timothy and Orchard hays, pellets and although I’ve been offering fresh vegetables including romaine, red leaf and green leaf lettuces, cilantro, cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes, etc. She’s starting to nibble the greens that she’s unfamiliar with. Guinea pigs, just like humans, can’t manufacture their own vitamin C, so they need to supplement with red pepper and many other vitamin C-rich foods.

Please read up on guinea pig care and diet before adopting by visiting this excellent web site http://www.guinealynx.info/.

She would love a home with people who will handle her daily, keep her well fed, and keep her habitat nice and clean.

If you’re interested in possibly adopting Fluffy, please contact [email protected] for an adoption application.

She is being fostered in Chicago’s Andersonville neighborhood.

Her adoption fee of $35 benefits the Friends of Petraits Rescue. For an additional $100, we’ll include a package of absolutely everything you need to care for her including a large cage, pellets, hay, litter, hidey hut and water bottle.

And, yes … Friends of Petraits is handling masked, minimum contact, socially distant adoptions.

Divorce ain’t easy.

For the average family, it’s hard to maintain one household. Even with two adults working, normal everyday life is a constant struggle. What happens when divorce enters the picture? Besides the emotional pain, you now have to try to manage two homes on the same salary?

For folks with lots of money, their issues are different.

Meet Andre Young. You know him better as a business mogul and music legend Dr. Dre. Between his rap group N.W.A., producing other music artists, endorsements with Coors Light, Dr. Pepper, and Chrysler and mostly from his ownership and the sale of his headphone company Beats, to Apple, Dre’s estimated net worth is more than eight hundred million dollars. That’s right, $800,000,000. In the rap world, only Jay Z is worth more cash.

For the last twenty-four years, Dr. Dre/Andre has been married to Nicole. They’re now separated and headed for a divorce. Nicole has asked for almost two million dollars in support…A MONTH!!! You’re probably asking yourself why she needs that much money? I know I did….and then I saw her detailed list of needs. According to TMZ, this is what Nicole needs to function every single month. Let me break it down for you:

Laundry and cleaning-$10,000
Clothes-$135,000
Education (tuition and living expenses)-$60,000
Charitable contributions-$125,000
Telephone, cell phone and email-$20,000
Mortgage-$100,000
Entertainment-$900,000

Hmmm…let’s see if can make any sense of this:

We’ll start with the clothes. I’m not sure what kind of outfits costs more than 100K each month, but if you’re really spending that kind of money on threads, then I guess the ten thousand bucks to keep them clean makes some sense. We’ll give her a pass on this one.
The mortgage is next. The Dre family has a forty million dollar mansion in Brentwood, California. The home formerly belonged to Tom Brady and Giselle Bundchen. The house is almost 10,000 square feet and among its amenities are a moat, multiple terraces and an infinity pool. Okay, I guess if your crib cost forty million, a one hundred thousand dollar mortgage might be right.

But, let’s tackle the items that sound a bit much:

Twenty thousand each month for a phone and email? C’mon Nicole! My cell phone is less than $50 for unlimited everything…even data! And Nicole, did you know e-mail can be found for free?!! Seriously, try G-Mail, Yahoo, or even old school it with AOL. I know the dude is worth 800 million, but don’t nickel and dime him over e-mail.

Here’s the one that gets me….almost one million dollars each month for entertainment. Seriously, what do you do for fun that can possibly cost that much? Private planes to Vegas every night and while staying in a top of the line suite? Vacations at the most exotic locations in the world? Season tickets to every sports teams in Los Angeles? I haven’t done the math, but I think doing all of these things in a month would cost under a million dollars.

I can’t say for sure, but you think Nicole might be a little spoiled?

Like I said at the top, divorce ain’t easy, but a two million dollar a month settlement makes it a little easier.

Related Post: What am I missing about the Dave Mathews Band?

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The way the New York Times tells it, he is a hero.

But as Ben Shapiro points out in this tweet:

Shapiro notes:

The only mention of his alleged crimes — for which there was an open warrant, and the alleged victim of whom called the police in the first place — comes in paragraph 17, and is as vague as humanly possible.

The paragraph says:

By videoconference from his hospital bed, Mr. Blake pleaded not guilty on Friday to three domestic charges against him, including a sexual assault count. The charges were filed in July. On the day Mr. Blake was shot, the woman who reported the assault called 911, saying that Mr. Blake was at her home. The Kenosha police said they were trying to arrest Mr. Blake when the shooting occurred. [Emphasis added.]

Need we go over the passionate response to any report of sexual abuse that emanates from the left? Such as the  failed attempt to hang Supreme Court Justice Brent Kavanaugh with such an accusation during his confirmation hearings?

Blake deserves justice just as do the accused Kenosha police officer. Judgment will be in the hands of a judge and a jury. And I’m not making a judgment about the charge against Blake. My point is the soaring hypocrisy of the New York Times demonstrated by this (what used to be called in journalism) “puff piece.”

It appears from the video of his attempted arrest and police shooting that he was either going for a knife inside his car or he was planning on fleeing the police with three of his children in car. If that’s true, in my book he’s not a hero.

P.S. Here’s a way to identify a reporter’s bias: Look at how the story concludes. If it comes with a quote that casts a good light on a subject, it’s a good bet that it’s where the reporter stands. Thus, the final graphs of the New York Times story:

“The way he’s trying to be a strong Black father for his children is the way that he’s taking on the mission of this movement,” Mr. Crump said.

Porche Bennett, an organizer with Black Lives Activists Kenosha, or BLAK, said on Sunday that there would be no pressure on Mr. Blake to publicly take up their cause or to become an outspoken advocate for the movement.

“We know we’ve got his support,” she said.

Soul Coughing has returned? Or is it just Mike Doughty, returning to original form? Nonetheless, to announce his new dance, the “Rona Pollona,” Doughty has teamed up with long time collaborator and touring mate, Andrew “Scrap” Livingston, for a new band called Ghost of Vroom.

The duo takes their name from Soul Coughing’s debut album, Ruby Vroom, and let me tell you, it sounds like we’re being rocketed back to those early, “Sugar-Free Jazz” days. This time around Doughty has enlisted the help of Mario Caldato Jr, or as Beatie Boys fans know him, “Mario C,” to produce this record.

Don’t touch the box, don’t touch the shelf
Don’t touch the people, don’t touch yourself
Lysol sprayed on the wheel
No hugging, no shaking, hand-holding, no feel

This is the Covid-19 dance that we all have to do to survive. Doughty and Livingston have called it the “Rona Pollona,” but when you listen to the lyrics, you know what they’re getting at, “The COVID.”

“Do the Rona Pollona, yeah/You do the Rona Pollona, right
You won’t know it if you’re doing it right
You’re never knowing it if you’re doing it right”

None of us know if we are doing it right, but we are trying our best. To wear a mask, to social distance, to wash our hands, to use hand sanitizer. We are doing whatever it takes, to stay safe, and to stay alive.

“If I jump, they’ll scrape me up
Throw me in sanitized SuperGulp cup
Come correct with a stimulus check!”

This is a snarky take on a serious subject, and I would expect nothing less from Mike Doughty. My biggest takeaway from this new project is that the Soul Coughing side of Mike is back! That is great news for fans of the band and the music scene in general.

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Fellow Americans, throw off our chains.

Never in my 78 years did I think I’d see laws that would imprison Americans in their homes. Never, not even under the tyrannical British monarch, King George III, were Americans told that they could not leave their homes.

Not in the popular dystopian novels, from 1984 to The Handmaid’s Tale,  was a nation’s entire population ordered to cower at home. I might be wrong, but I don’t recall reading anywhere that in their most totalitarian moments, did communist, socialist and nazi bullies order that everyone, except the vaguely defined “essentials,” be locked downed.

Yet this unprecedented and unthinkable state of misery has been imposed on Americans, people who came here for freedom and those born here in liberty. To my surprise and disappointment, Americans have meekly obeyed. That’s because they have been petrified by the public health and epidemiological aces who warned that going outside would be deadly. That has led many elected officers and their bureaucrats to inflict these dreadful measures because they fear questioning The Science.

Instead of challenging the science, the pols, the media and much of the public have turned this into a partisan blame game: One side says President Donald Trump’s at fault because he didn’t act quickly enough. The other accuses Democrats of being hypocrites because they opposed Trump’s “racist” and “xenophobic” closing of the border to travelers from infected nations. Truth is, no one was prepared.

Included among the blameworthy are the “experts.” These are the public health officers, epidemiologists and a slew of academics who found themselves sprung from their ivory towers into the spotlight. Sadly, they brought with themselves unchallengeable certitude about how the lives of every one of the 328,239,523 people in America should be conducted. Damnable certitude, I dare to add. 

They have flooded the national conversation with botched predictions and overly heated warnings. They and so many others who were given the awesome responsibility of keeping Americans safe from contagions and plagues were demonstrably unprepared.

To get a taste, check out, “Miscalculation at Every Level Left U.S. Unequipped to Fight Coronavirus: A shortfall in masks lays bare the blunders by hospitals, manufacturers and the federal government.”

…each part of the medical-industrial equation acted in its own interest, and didn’t set aside resources that might have better prepared America for the coronavirus crisis. Each ignored warnings of shortages of protective equipment in case of a pandemic—shortages that handicapped the struggle against the virus early on and continue today.

No need here to review the frequent, bloated and unreal predictions of 2 million Americans dying and overwhelmed hospitals. Doom and gloom showered down on us with Papal-like sureness. Among them were mandatory prescriptions that sometimes were at war with themselves: Don’t wear masks; then wear masks. Don’t go outside; then go outside.

If science is to govern us absolutely, the science better be right. And for those who blindly repeat the cliche, “follow the science” without understanding science, here is reminder: The Science can be and sometimes is wrong. Or incomplete and not comprehensive. As is the case of this pandemic.

Physical health is only part of the science that should have received due diligence. What is the true costs of such a crackdown on so many personal freedoms?  The sciences of psychology and economics were brushed aside, with minimal understanding or care about what the extreme  impositions would have on our mental health, learning, quality of life, relationships, security and much more.

When all is said and done, those ignored costs will, I believe, exceed the costs of Covid-19. Suicides and bouts of depression, especially among the young, up. Mental and emotional breakdowns, up. Deaths from deferred operations for heart diseases and more, up. Business failures, up. Unemployment, way up.

How many parents had to leave work to take care of their confined children? Or had to leave their children unattended? How many children feel abandoned because, well, they have been. How many children are falling behind, perhaps permanently, in their education. How many children are starving for friendship? How many children have become slaves of their smart phones in search of companionship? How many children have been denied the real-world experience of learning how to relate to other people face to face? How many children will carry these losses into adulthood? How much damage has been done to younger generations by subjecting them to untried and demonstrably destructive remote learning? And when the hell were teachers unions assigned to replace parents?

Never mind that the lockdowns and straight jackets have damaged minorities and impoverished the most. Do we have to listen to politicians whose expressed compassion for these folks are unmatched, but then launch another set of restrictions that pile on the misery?

What to do? How to escape this never-ending and suffocating suspension of some of our civil rights? Do Americans have to take to the streets like the criminals who are using social justice as a shield to hide their true purposes as they wreck lives and property? Perish the thought.

Because this form of government suppression is so unusual, the solutions are difficult. Peaceful civil disobedience was an effective tool to fight racial injustice. Maybe that.  Challenge the power of the tin-pot despots who run our cities, states and nation to micromanage our lives.  In the courts. In the voting booth. At public hearings. In the media. Confront these autocrats at every turn, whether they are on school boards, in city halls or statehouses.

Americans know what’s good for them. Parents who want to send their children to school shouldn’t be stifled. Parents who want to keep their kids at home should. It’s not in the American character to accept autocracy. Get mad. Don’t take it anymore.

There are going to be some people we encounter who don’t believe in us, who are not for us and who will not choose us and that’s O.K.! Their lack of vision or willingness to accept the vision doesn’t mean we’re not in the picture! They can try to cut us out, erase or minimize our role, but the truth is without us there is no production!