JULY

The cleavage-bearing cesspool of a month in review

By PAUL MCMORROW

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Oscar the cat makes his grand entrances just as life is about to leave.

A hop onto the bed, a fastidious lick of the paws, then a snuggle beside a nursing home patient with little time left. Oscar's purr, when keeping close company with the dying, is so intense it's almost a low rumble.

"He's a cat with an uncanny instinct for death," said Dr. David M. Dosa, assistant professor at the Brown University School of Medicine and a geriatric specialist. "He attends deaths. He's pretty insistent on it."

In the two years since Oscar was adopted into the third-floor dementia unit of the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, he has maintained close vigil over the deaths of more than 25 patients, according to nursing staff, doctors who treat patients in the home and an article in tomorrow's New England Journal of Medicine, written by Dosa.

When death is near, Oscar nearly always appears at the last hour or so. Yet he shows no special interest in patients who are simply in poor shape, or even patients who may be dying but who still have a few days. Animal behavior experts have no explanation for Oscar's ability to sense imminent death. They theorize that he might detect some subtle change in metabolism-felines are as acutely sensitive to smells as dogs-but are stumped as to why he would show interest. -- Boston Globe, 7.26.07

Oscar! You son of a bitch. Get off of July!

Aw, look what you did, you furry, creepy bastard. What a mess-there's blood and mascara everywhere! No, no, Oscar, it's OK-it's only Tammy Faye. But you'd better be careful. Next time, you might get somebody that people will miss. Run along now, and don't touch anything.

So, anyway, Jesus, what a month to have to clean up after. It began with bombs bursting in air (and on every Baghdad street corner), ended with terrifying reports of astronauts drunk-driving shuttles all around space, and in between, the month saw pretty much every disaster, natural and otherwise, visited upon it.

It was ugly, so let's start off on a happy note. Our beloved Decider spent a rather pleasant week in Kennebunkport with Vlad the Poisoner-an occasion that saw the pair munching on lobster, rubbing lotion on each other's backs, trading torture techniques, driving fast boats and exchanging witty banter about pointing missiles at each other's mother's homes. According to an Associated Press count, during the span of the Russian statesman's visit, the president declined Putin's offer of a cup of tea 93 separate times. Probably a wise move.

The president was not so adept at dodging a colonoscopy appointment. It's a shame Lynndie England was indisposed. She would've known right where to point.

Yeah, that's unpleasant. But so is life. And so, especially, was July. A deadly heat wave struck Europe, while both the Midwest and England suffered catastrophic flooding, half the western US burnt to the ground, India was whacked by a monsoon, steam pipes underneath New York City exploded and almost shot asbestos everywhere and a couple geeks had their shiny new iPhones hacked into. Oh, and an earthquake trashed a Japanese nuclear power plant that had been built, logically enough, right on top of a fault line.

And speaking of huge, gaping crevasses ... um, let's have the Washington Post take this one:

There was cleavage on display Wednesday afternoon on C-SPAN2. It belonged to Sen. Hillary Clinton. She was talking on the Senate floor about the burdensome cost of higher education. She was wearing a rose-colored blazer over a black top. The neckline sat low on her chest and had a subtle V-shape. The cleavage registered after only a quick glance. No scrunch-faced scrutiny was necessary. There wasn't an unseemly amount of cleavage showing, but there it was. Undeniable.

Earlier this month, Mitt Romney likened Sen. Clinton to Karl Marx. We can only hope that Clinton's cleave-tastic suit was meant to show Romney that she had far less chest hair than that sasquatch Marx. (By comparison, body-hair-wise, Friedrich Engels was balder than Britney. Everywhere. No kidding.)

And while Clinton's foray into the nether regions of near-nippledom is certainly fucking gross, it's also totally understandable. It's campaign season, and sex-even grandma sex, apparently-sells. Just look at CNN: Their silver fox, Anderson Cooper, is no longer hottt enough to make politics interesting, so the network went where all the sex is these days-YouTube. They took the 35 Democratic candidates for president, assembled them on a stage, and made them answer questions about reparations and world dictators from ordinary Americans.

CNN hailed the debate as a revolution or something, but we were disappointed. The format failed to really utilize YouTube's vast possibilities, which is to say, it wasn't nearly as humiliating for the candidates as it could have been. Next time out, let's cut the politics out completely. Instead, Cooper will cue up a series of highly-trafficked YouTube clips. They'll be shown to the candidates, who will then have to respond. Make them actually debate YouTube. "Here's a squirrel waterskiing," Cooper will say. "Senator McCain, your response?"

Imagine the possibilities: Mitt Romney could try turning the Oozinator commercial into an anti-gay tirade, while Hillary Clinton would have to find something-anything-that might make No Child Left Behind relate to a video of a cat playing the piano. Obama might have to figure out how those Filipino prisoners dancing to "Thriller" relate to drug treatment and recidivism rates. John Edwards would, in all likelihood, have to respond to a video of John Edwards primping his $50,000 hair for a TV interview.

And you just know that Rudy Giuliani would take one look at the Dramatic Chipmunk and then declare, "You know, that's exactly what I did when the World Trade Center fell on 9.11! Same sound effects, too! Dun dunnn daaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh! Crash! Remember that?"

Hey, hey, LBJ! How many of your wives did Oscar the cat kill today?

Your only one? Really? Shit. Sorry about that.

The client list from one of Washington, DC's madams is leaking out. In response, a Republican senator from Louisiana is apologizing to his wife and his country. But the hookers he saw were all women. So let's move on to news that actually matters.

July was a busy month for all types of shitbags. Scooter Libby became a free man after the president commuted the warmongering, perjuring, justice-obstructer's (take that, huh?) prison sentence. Despite being faced with armed jihadis, threats of American military aggression and several constitutional crises, the indestructible Pervez Musharraf somehow managed to avoid, for the millionth month in a row, being toppled and ground into pig food. (There's always August.) Harry Potter got in a wand fight with somebody. And Al Gore reversed global warming with the power of rock & roll! Yeeeaaaaooowwwwwww!

Um, Oscar? Buddy? Have you been playing in the boxes of Chinese toothpaste again? Bad kitty!

Attention, everybody: Mitt Romney would like you to know that Barack Obama wants your kid to learn sex ed in kindergarten. If you live in the Carolinas, Obama may also want your job. (How do you know? Check your hands.)

Perhaps we're exaggerating. Romney hasn't gone all Jesse Helms on us yet. All he's done is call America "a cesspool of violence and sex and drugs and indolence and perversions." It's hard to argue with that.

In conclusion, July was the month that Cindy Sheehan first started talking about running for Nancy Pelosi's seat in Congress. Where's a death cat when you need him?

Naw, we can't close out the month like that. It's too hot for pessimism and death wishes. What we need now is hope. Or, barring that, what we need now is 42 ounces of icy cold refreshment. Who could hook us up with that?

A new McDonald's menu item is a bit of a stunner. Remember Supersize sodas? They're back, except this time the chain is trying a new name. Meet the "Hugo," a 42-ounce drink now available for as little as 89 cents in some markets. A Hugo soda contains about 410 calories.

McDonald's might as well have called it the Tubbo. Making matters worse, Hugo ads are available in several languages, making sure that minorities-who are disproportionately affected by the obesity epidemic-are aware of the budget beverage.

McDonald's officials said they were simply offering customers a variety of choices. And they emphasized that the Hugo was a summer promotion and available only in some markets.

"People, I believe, tend to drink more during the summer,'' said Danya Proud, a McDonald's spokeswoman. "People are out and about."

She said the Hugo was being offered because of customer demand, and so far, it has sold quite well. Ms. Proud cautioned about comparing the Hugo to McDonald's old Supersize menu.

"That's not what this is about," she said. "You have to put it in context with the rest of our menu."