Oh. Colbert

The Colbert Report had a guest, Alan Rabinowitz, speaking about his book "Life In The Valley of Death", a book about tigers and other big cats who are nearing extinction.

He was talking about how he came to care about these animals. He said he grew up stuttering, severely, and back in his childhood days, no one knew what to do with people who stuttered. So he was put in special ed classes. Colbert asked him why he chose to speak for these big cats.

He said, "Now two things stutterers can do without stuttering: One is sing, and I could never sing. The other is speak to animals. So I grew up, in my childhood, coming home from school where I would never speak at all because people thought I was stupid, and I would go in my closet and talk to little New York style animals; a chameleon, a green turtle, a gerbil, something like that. And I realized animals don't have a voice. They have no...they're just like me: They can think, they have feelings, but they don't have voices. So in a particular point in my childhood, as they were allowing me to pour my heart out to them, I really...I made a promise to animals. I swore to them that if I ever found my voice and stopped stuttering or could control my stuttering, that I would be their voice and that I would actually try to speak for them and save them. That's what I do."

At which point Colbert responds with, "Are you *trying* to make me cry? Cause this is the closest that any guest has ever gotten."

Normally thunderstorms make me very happy, but for some reason tonight's storm is making me sad. I am thinking of all the people and animals who don't have shelter tonight. I am thinking about all the people who have had their homes and lives destroyed because of all the flooding over the last few days.

It's weird. The thunder is shaking my floors and walls. The lightning is making cracking noises. These are normally happy things for me.