The topic this week is stench. Stink. The week got off to an malodorous start as I began my loads of laundry last Sunday to the sweet sniff of cat piss.

That ain't my cat, and I knew it.

My cat don't do 'dat. However, the boy cat -- the boy with balls who's gotten to hang out here, a bit much unsupervised in retrospect, if you asked me -- would do 'dat.

And, he did.

Buster can visit but he can't stay over anymore. Not that Finley minds. They weren't buddies. The former is an un-fixed outdoor boy cat, and the latter is a middle-aged, hefty female puss, who frankly doesn't like to share me.

I sometimes forget how lucky I am with Finley. She doesn't foul up my bedsheets or my clothes. In the early to mid-90s, I had a cat that adored me but definitely sprayed my shit.

For me, it's the one offense that would require me to have to give up the animal. I can't stand the smell of cat urine. Hate it. Had to throw out a belt, and had to spray and respray clothes with enzyme spray and wash and rewash them in order to get them smelling halfway decent.

Upon my return home from an evening of Saturday fun, I found Finley sitting in a pile of my good clothes in the laundry room. When I noticed that my clothes in the bedroom had been sprayed, I realized that, maybe, Finley was protecting the clothes that were still out and available for spray from the dastardly boy cat.

Finley was protecting me.

Hey, truth be told, Finley has ruined every piece of good furniture I have with her claws. However, I won't do declawing. Perhaps I should. To be honest, the cats I've played with who are declawed don't seem one iota less happy than my cat. I don't even think they really notice.

Problem is, I notice.

I've always thought I'd like to have a dog. However, I don't really want "responsibility" as it pertains to an animal. I don't want work. I want a pet, a self-sustaining, non-conversational roommate.

One has to walk dogs. One has to play with dogs.

Cats like to be left alone, although when they're in the mood for affection, they do like to snuggle and watch TV. Nevertheless, not a lot of activity is required.

Part of me is pretty sure though that once Finley is gone, presuming I don't perish in a freak alligator accident first, I'll be done with pets. Seriously. I haven't had nice furniture since the day I spent $2,000 on my microfiber leather couches only to have Finley hair and scratch 'em to death.

However, the whole cat piss episode this week makes me realize that the truth of the matter is that I probably wouldn't want another pet because, frankly, behaviorally, Finley is pretty much unbeatable.

Quick hits on the ol' blog pipe:

1. Major jeers to Rush Limbaugh for suggesting that Michael J. Fox was acting during a commercial, in which Fox endorsed embryonic stem-cell research and a Democratic candidate. Limbaugh suggested the Parkinson's sufferer was off his meds. However, truth is Fox had taken a bit much medication. He was what they call dyskinesic.

The thing about Limbaugh, a renowned drug addict, is that he believes Fox' foray into political life, in the form of an advertisement, makes it fair for him to take swipes at him. Surely, it is totally fair game to call Fox' ideas into question or even the quality of the candidate for whom he is doing the ad.

However, to take jabs at somebody because of an ailment, something they cannot control, something with an effect so visible and sad, particularly on somebody so beloved in American culture (even if Fox is a Canuck), was just about the worst ride on the karma train the drug-addict announcer could have taken.

Now, given that I am a pro-life individual, you might think I am against embryonic stem-cell research. Well, I'm not because the embryos from which stem cells are taken are already dead. To suggest that allowing embryonic stem-cell research would act to promote baby-killing is analagous to thinking that organ donation works to promote doctor apathy toward the seriously ill.

While the drug-addict radio host might be right in some ways that stem-cell research is hardly proven, it's irrelevant to arguments being made by people in favor of it. All we suggest is that with American innovation and solid science, stem cells could be key to a number of medical miracles years down the road -- including eventual cures for diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

To deny science the right to make progress in the form of stem-cell research in the name of religion or faith is shallow-minded and ignorant. To poke fun at a proponent of the issue, somebody who happens to be dying from a disease that could be helped by said research, in such a way that isn't issues-oriented but is mean-spirited and cruel ... well, at some point one has to consider the possibility that the speaker of such words is really just a bad guy.

I don't mean that the drug-addict and I could agree to disagree. I mean that he's a bad person, somebody away from whom people should stay because, frankly, to like him, to support his views by listening to his show is to be complicit in his cruelty.

2. The Oklahoma Gazette loves me. They really, really do.

In their Chicken-Fried News section of the alternative Oklahoma City bi-weekly, the writer yapped about Republican state superintendent candidate Bill Crozier and the videotape he gave us regarding his idea of using textbooks to protect kids from shooters.

In it, he/she wrote: The video has been made available on KOCO-TV Channel 5’s Web site, although it was awfully slow in loading after this story broke.

Frankly, I love the acknowledgment. However, the writer's non sequitur is highly subjective. Considering I recall what the Gazette paid my buddy J to write there 15 years ago, I'm guessing it's about time those boys invest a little money in something other than good old-fashioned Oklahoma dial-up.

The problem with both Crozier's video experiment and the Gazette's off-the-cuff, trying-to-be-cute-but-really-being-sort-of-rude remark, is that conclusions are drawn without nearly enough information. To be honest, I don't find Crozier's idea to be crazy at all.

It's terrific that he's thinking about how to protect kids from mad gunmen. If one had to resign himself to the notion that kids are gonna get ripped by bullets from time to time, I suppose looking into Kevlar backpacks or letterman jackets might be the way to go. Textbooks? Ah, not so much.

My point is that I don't find it to be insane at all to consider protective options for kids. To utilize resources that are already in the classroom to achieve this protection seems to be pretty, well, resourceful. Problem is, however, that school violence is as much a symptom of societal ills as it as a result of them. Truth is, in my opinion, that we've got too many angry men, angry male teens with easy access to guns.

One either has to get to the bottom of their collective anger, or you've got to take away the guns. On the other hand, perhaps you just say "F*** it," and figure out a makeshift way to keep kids from getting shot when it happens -- and, I've got no problem with it, although I completely recognize that it'd be a lot more sane to examine the real problem.

As for the speed of the video, if the Gazette thinks that they got in a clever, satirical shot at a media outlet over the fact that a 15-minute video on an enterprise server running in a WMA format takes about 10 seconds to load, well, you got me.

It did remind me though that Toby Keith has a great li'l song called "The Critic," and it's directed toward The Oklahoma Gazette. Lyrics here.

Truth is, though, for me, I'd much rather koco.com make their pages each issue because, frankly, one of my goals is to build the site into something on the tip of the local lexicon. The Crozier video (which we debuted to the world last week) did just that nationally, by the way, as it was shown on Keith Olbermann's "Countdown," on Shepard Smith's afternoon report and a handful of other cable news shows.

What's kind of funny is that the way this video got out to the world is that our morning reporter was doing a political interview with Crozier, one of those formal just-talk-about-the-issues sort of spots, and the candidate had a videotape in his hand. Our reporter asked about it and asked if we could show it, and it's now a part of Internet pop culture for the midterm 2006 election season.

3. Finally, I'm about ready for election season to be over.

I have no plans to vote. The only candidate I can really get behind is probably Jari Askins for Lt. Governor over Todd Hiett. I'd also like to see Wallace Collins, here in Norman, destroy Thad Balkman at the polls.

Outside of those races, I could care less. Not enthused about Gov. Brad Henry one bit. Not ever going to vote for Ernest Istook. Never, ever.

Look, the best governors Oklahoma has ever had, in my estimation, were George Nigh and David Walters. They're the only two true progressives we've had lead this state. If I wanted a moderate Republican to be governor of the Sooner State, I'd be glad to cast my vote for Henry.

However, I am a firm believer that it's imperative for progressive voters to quit choosing between the lesser of two evils. Otherwise, our progressives will always slant to the right.

Quick confessions. Things I'll never repeat again, although I know that blogs are "forever."

- Joy Behar is kinda sexy. In a brilliant Camille Paglia piece for Salon, she notes that:

I'm sorry that Joy Behar is stuck on ABC's "The View." She's scathingly liberal. I was a huge admirer of her stand-up routines in the early '90s, when she also had a radio show. Now she's got this very well-paid sinecure on "The View," where she just sits there and reacts now and then. She still tours, but I wish she was more engaged in aggressive political satire.

- I quite enjoy Creed's "My Sacrifice" and N'Sync's "I Want You Back".

Yikes. That's too much confession time.