This Little Piggy Had None

You might have heard about the tiger that escaped from near a West Palm Beach residential neighborhood earlier this week and unfortunately had to be put down when it rushed a police officer. But you might not have heard about the hapless woman who offered to let police twist her pig's tail in hopes that the squealing might attraact the tiger and facilitate its capture. (Should have used a tape of Kim Cattrall in "Porky's," but that's another story . . .)

In any case, it seems that now the thoughtful pig owner is being charged with animal cruelty because, in the process of bringing the pig to officers at the scene, she transported it in her 140+ degree trunk. The woman was nonplussed at the allegations.

"I can't believe they have the gall," she said. "I was just trying to help the tiger find his way back home." She added that the trunk of her Cadillac is air conditioned, and she was planning to eat the pig when it is full grown.

Pause a moment to ponder that last phrase: She was planning to eat the pig when it is full grown. I wasn't aware that planning to eat something eventually was justfication for abusing it as much as you like in the meantime, but I'm glad to have the info.

Mr. Bush, I plan to eat you when you are full grown.

Pardon My Face

One of the downsides to moving to that bastion of liberality, Austin, is that you have to put up with a little bit of bullshit now and then. Nonetheless, I am still amazed that in a town where the cops won't cite a woman for walking around topless (which would be gender-based discrimination, since men don't have to cover their breasts), you apparently can't wear a ski mask into a convenience store.

I think what's most telling here is the crime he was charged with. "Making a terrorist threat"? Ah, the Patriot Act, very nice. Does this mean that citizens may no longer cover their faces in public if they so choose? Have we completely given up any presumptive right of privacy in this country? Can a Muslim woman wear her hijab into a convenience store? Is a ski mask a terrorist threat, but a Halloween mask is not? How about one of those Zorro masks that only covers your eyes? What about blackface?

And I won't even touch the irony that a clerk named "Atif Akhlaque" thought that a skinny white guy in a ski mask was a terrorist.