Sunday, October 31, 2004
Can we please get this grinning idiot out of the White House now?
(Feel free to use, reproduce or post the image anywhere, as long as it's for free. Link back to or attribute to me, or not. Click the pic for a larger image.)
~
10/31/2004 11:35:00 AM
Friday, October 29, 2004
World News »
Time is GMT + 8 hours
Posted: 30 October 2004 0713 hrs
White House says Osama tape authentic
WASHINGTON : The White House said on Friday that US intelligence agencies believe a newly broadcast videotaped threat by Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was authentic and recorded recently....A senior State Department official said US diplomats in Qatar were given a copy of the videotape before it aired on Al-Jazeera television and unsuccessfully sought to prevent the Arabic-language network from broadcasting it.
It's Official:
Osama bin Ladin is the gopher.
Dubya is Carl, and the world is his golf course.
~
10/29/2004 10:24:00 PM
If only tie-dyes could match Nature's colors. The orange and green of an acorn squash are used here to create a (CitrusMoon-style) symmetrical square:
It tiles nicely:
The orange blotch comes from the bottom of this friendly little Squash-O-Lantern:
I really can't make pumpkin pie, but whatever I carved this year I wanted to eventually eat, so squash it was.
The Comedy and Drama of the season...
~
10/29/2004 01:53:00 PM
Thursday, October 28, 2004
File under: Round Objects
A psychedelic harvest moon that swallowed a crescent moon? No, just a scan of the bottom of a brown plastic pill bottle filled with clear beads.
File under: Spectral?
Woo! Ghostly light? I saw a ghost that looked a bit like this once. No, really. I was in Virginia visiting a friend at her parents' house, and we saw this shimmering light...
But it gets heavy from there on in. Really heavy. I'll tell that one later, I promise.
This particular ghostly light is just the reflection on a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale, as well as the color of the Brown Ale itself in its clear glass bottle.
*WARNING, BEER TALK FOLLOWS*
I think Newcastle is a spectacular beer, but its Achille's heel is revealed when you do not heed the directions to "SERVE COLD." When Newcastle gets a bit warm or flat it tastes incredibly sweet, a part of its character that is not apparent when it's nice and frosty-chilled.
~
10/28/2004 09:28:00 AM
Tuesday, October 26, 2004
Brief notes from the last few days:
-Sunday-
Watched amused as a man in a huge SUV tied the mattress he'd just bought onto the roof of his truck. It wouldn't fit inside. The SUV was big as a tank but had all the cargo room of a VW bug. That's practicality for you.
-Today-
Note to self: Do not wear corduroy pants when sneaking in to work late. They swish, making it necessary to walk bowlegged to avoid making noise.
-Sunday-
Briefly forgot what year it is. Spent five minutes in 2002 before remembering it's 2004. It is 2004, right?
-Saturday-
Note to self: Next time tell Molly not to shave off my sideburns when she cuts my hair. That's what happens when you become too familiar with people. She stopped asking first and is now just buzzing off the 'burns way up near the tips of my ears, making my face look even bigger, the jawbone of an ass on a small head, Franken-Face a.k.a. Herman-Munster-Head. Thanks, Molly. The zit on my chin accentuates the whole effect, and it probably doesn't help that I accidentally shaved it off yesterday, leaving a big scab. Luckily I'm a big fan of Fred Gwynne and Bruce Campbell. If chins could kill, those guys'd be supervillains.
-Today-
Something reminded me of this old joke. There was a whole series of them when I was a kid:
Janey was outside in her favorite skirt, swinging on the swing again, swinging REALLY high, and her Mom yelled out the window, "Janey, don't swing so high! The boys will see your underwear!"~
But Janey just laughed and laughed. She wasn't wearing any underwear!
10/26/2004 01:06:00 PM
Monday, October 25, 2004
File under:
Square Objects
A carpenter cut the top off of a 6"x6" post with a circular saw blade that couldn't make it through with one cut, so he made three cuts on three sides, leaving this pattern and texture overlaying the wood grain. It's heavy, roughly cubicle and makes a nice bookend.
The carpenter seemed to wonder why I wanted to keep this bit of scrap. I thought he should have understood my fascination, especially since he was finishing an MFA in sculpture.
(Click image to enlarge.)
~
10/25/2004 09:48:00 AM
Saturday, October 23, 2004
10/23/2004 01:41:00 PM
Friday, October 22, 2004
Stumbling Around the 'Net
The 'Net is a weird place in the morning when, first thing at work, still groggy but feeling little zings! of caffeine mania from a first cup of java or of tea, you peruse your e-mail from behind eyelids still puffy with sleep. Not your job e-mail, NO! --that can wait. The first thing you have to do is clock into GMail or Hotmail or Yahoo to see if anything truly important happened while you were asleep.
Then it's on to a message board or forum or such to check on the threads in which you've been conversing. Probably nothing much new has occurred, but there's always the slim chance of some excitement. Perhaps someone took offense at something you said and called you an 'asshat' while you were away and vulnerable to attacks and misunderstandings. Or maybe you missed out on something that turned into a really good joke.
Maybe you frequent MetaFilter. You peruse a few good links, like the guy who has painstakingly crafted Justice League superhero action figures out of 'My Little Ponies'. Wow. That's what they call a "magnificent obsession."
You pick up a quick news fix there too, learning that lies told by politicians are effective. Maybe this isn't news to you, because you have one of those uncles who yells "Lies! Lies!" at the TV set every time an anti-Bush advert comes on. But anything he likes to hear is the truth whether it's a lie or not. Yup. When people want to believe it, it's the truth. When they don't, it's a lie. This is news?
Nah, it's just the depressing vocalization of something you already knew. So maybe you head over to AskMetaFilter, where people pose important questions to an amazing collective pool of, um ... other people who know stuff. No, really, there are doctors and lawyers and vets and web designers and linguists and experts on just about anything over there. Somebody's wondering if Back in Black by AC/DC really is the third-best selling album of all time.
Suddenly you can't help picturing AC/DC guitarist Angus Young decked out in his trademark public school uniform complete with knickers and tie and cap, his face contorted in weird grimaces, muttering to himself as his fingers twang maniacally at the strings. But there's no music to go with the image, just Angus, Chuck-Berry-stepping across the stage of your mind, and it's all a little too weird at 9:00 A.M.
So it's on to another question, and in your morning mental haze you read something about "public hair grooming," and then you're picturing someone getting his hair cut in the middle of a mall, or maybe on a street corner, as onlookers, you know, look on ... but they're disappointed, hoping for a more entertaining spectacle. Suddenly the stylist, sensing the crowd's boredom, begins juggling three pairs of scissors, taking little nips out of his victim's hair in between catches and tosses. But he's not very good, so the customer ends up looking like his head suffers from mange, until finally one pair of scissors lands --THUNK!-- with one blade stuck in the top of the poor customer's head. The crowd cheers and, your eyes back on the computer screen, you notice that the question wasn't about public hair, it was about pubic hair. "Male pubic hair grooming. Looking both for tips on tools, technique, etc. as well as the female response - i.e. should I even bother?" Other images flood your mind now, convincing you to move on.
Someone else is asking about a GPS unit for his car so he'll never be lost and, not being very technical, the first thing you think of is this:
You briefly consider suggesting this as a cheap alternative to a $600 GPS unit, then you decide not to be glib. On a lark, you Google Image Search for compasses, and discover the exact compass you were picturing belonged to one "Colonel Norman J. Maxwell, a Civil War Union Veteran of the Army of the Potomac, 9th Corps." He even has his own online museum.
Maybe you've never been able to connect to the American Civil War, it just seems like a bunch of poor dishevelled bastards slogging through perpetual mud until they eventually stand face-to-face in a field, discharge muskets, then topple like bowling pins dressed up in raggle-taggle uniforms. This absurd image lingers as you read that Maxwell was a member of the "Roundheads" who fought in the Carolinas, Virginia, Maryland, and Tennessee.
The Roundheads, you reckon, fought the Pinheads on mucky battlefields across the American South. It only makes sense. Maybe the Pinheads wore those tall, pointy British hats, which were in fact designed especially to cover their tall, pointy heads. This only makes sense as well.
You're suspicious of Colonel Maxwell, as he won many metals yet lived to 95. How was this possible in the Civil War, when men died from infected wounds that would be considered scratches today, when a broken bone often became a reason for an amputation that was performed with whisky as an anaesthetic and tar as a cauterizing agent? Yet he entered the War as a sargeant, not a privileged officer commanding men to die from the safety of a tent on a hill.
This is all a bit heavy for the morning, though, so you head on back to something truly mystifying: J'onn J'onnz the Martian Manhunter of the Justice League, PONYFIED! Man, did he make a good likeness of J'onn or what? Yup. Good times.
Now THAT is what the Internet is for.
~
10/22/2004 09:05:00 AM
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
Catnap Season
No one should have to work or do anything when the Fall weather first turns cold, when blood thickens like maple syrup sap in the trees and brains turn fuzzy as if with cotton-candy clouds. Thinking becomes impossible, but daydreaming is as easy as slipping on ice.
It's catnap season.
Sneak out of work to sip coffee in a bookshop. Lie on your back under the trees and stare up at the sky through the stained glass of Autumn leaves. Drink a beer and watch old TV shows through half-closed eyes. Read last Sunday's comics. Or curl up with a cat for a catnap; if you don't have cats, you can still catnap by yourself.
But for God's sake, if you don't have to do anything, or you don't have anything to do: Do nothing and revel in it.
~
10/20/2004 03:27:00 PM
Tigger actor acquitted of fondling teenFull story here.
Jury takes less than an hour
to decide case of Disney World worker
The Associated Press
Updated: 7:12 p.m. ET Aug. 4, 2004
ORLANDO, Fla. - A Walt Disney World worker who portrayed the character Tigger was acquitted Wednesday of charges he fondled a 13-year-old girl while posing for a photo with the teen and her mother.
photo: George Skene/AP
Attorney Jeff Kaufmann, right, wears a Tigger costume
for his final arguments in the trial of Michael Chartrand...
Christopher Robin also came to Tigger's defence, saying the tiger was a bit randy ("It's all part of being 'bouncy bouncy bouncy'...") but never did anything more improprietous than goosing Robin's housecat Mrs Wiggles.
However, in related news, Calvin's arch-nemesis Suzie is accusing Hobbes and Tony the Tiger of improper advances in a hotel the characters stayed at for a Children's Favorite Animals convention last Spring. "It was like the U.S. Navy Tailhook Scandal," Suzie said on an episode of the Jerry Springer show, "I had to run through a gauntlet of fuzzy animals to get to my room, and they were all pawing me, just ... pawing me ... with their paws ... " she said, breaking down in tears in Springer's arms. "The whole time I was screaming, 'I'm not a furry! I'm not into this! Leave me alone!'"
Hobbes denies all allegations on the basis of "Are you kidding? I don't want her cooties!" while Tony would only make the cryptic comment "Theeeeeey're greeeeeat!"
Calvin told reporters "Suzie is just still pissed off because of the bag of dogpoo Hobbes and I set fire to on her porch. Can you believe she stomped out the flames? Whatta moron."
Tigers the world over (including Simba and Kimba) are banding together to fight what they see as a smear campaign against their kind, like this photo originally presented as evidence against Tigger:
The image turned out to be a crude photoshopping of two photo's found on the Internet, cobbled together by a weblogger and writer named Shane.
Shane could not be reached for comment, but his spokesperson Widget the Kitty told reporters "Get over it. It was just a joke. He's a total cat-lover. And the man has no time for conspiracies, he's always cleaning out five litter boxes. Besides, he's just not that smart."
~
10/20/2004 01:30:00 PM
Monday, October 18, 2004
Poghmo Island
This photo was long thought to be of an ancient wooden monument in the forests of Poghmo Island, lacquered red and engraved with a weathered face sporting horns, perhaps evidence of the culture of one of the groups of inhabitants or creatures native to the isle. Eventually it was revealed as a hoax, though, simply the handle of an old spackling knife made by the Red Devil paint company:
However, sightings of the strange inhabitants of Poghmo Island continue to be reported, including were-people and the legendary Argybarple Beast. A composite sketch of the various descriptions of the Argybarple Beast follows:
Can photos be far behind?
~
10/18/2004 04:01:00 PM
Dear Diary
I usually don't do the plain old 'dear diary' thing, but maybe I should. Life is interesting. Sometimes reality really is stranger than fiction, which is annoying when you want to cannabalize that reality into a short-story or some sort of creative writing but it comes off as too contrived.
"That just sounds a little fake, " people say when they read your story. "Things like this don't happen in reality." And then you want to shout, "BUT IT DID HAPPEN!" ...which is a totally moot point. Sorry. Reality has put one over on you. Now you have this little personal gem that you can never show people, at least not in the wonderful world of fiction.
"HA HA!" says Reality. "Sometimes you have to live in the Real World just for the sake of Living."
...which should, ya know, be apparent anyway.
Nothing dramatic beyond belief happened to me this weekend, but there were a couple of incidents I feel like repeating here in the Non-Fiction category.
I bought a new car recently, not a NEW new car, but a 2002 with 14,000 miles on it, the newest car (by a factor of by about 50,000 miles) I've ever owned. I'm not a car-person. I've vowed never to own a truly NEW car until I can afford a hybrid, but this car was an incredible deal that fell into my lap, it gets fantastic mileage, and the previous owner took care of it fanatically. You could literally eat off the engine that he must have degreased weekly. Of course it's my first really spiffy-looking auto too, a sporty, shiny little black two-door. To me it's a luxury after years of junkers, one of which I drove for nine months after its reverse gear quit working. Parking was a constant challenge requiring the ability to pull forward out of the space, or parking on a hill so as to be able to coast backwards.
Last Saturday in the new car I took a right turn into a parking lot and a kid in a sports car coming from the opposite direction turned a left, cutting right in front of me, causing me to slam on the brakes and nearly stall out to avoid an accident. Then he gave me that angry look that people give you around here, the expression of ultimate ironic stupidity that just perfectly communicates the exact bit of idiocy they're thinking: "What the hell is wrong with you, jackass!? I almost caused an accident!"
I briefly considered that I should have just hit the cocky little jerk, sued him for damages, and taught him a lesson. But, ya know, I would have messed up my new car -- not to mention it wouldn't have been very nice.
Why let an idiot ruin your day, though? --so I put it out of my mind. With practice, this gets easier as you get older. I pulled into a parking lot and it was just what Pooh Bear and Christopher Robin would have called a blustery day, the wind was howling and the leaves were whipping everywhere and it was just an elemental joy to watch. Suddenly a shopping cart took wing and skimmed across the blacktop like a skater on a pond, picking up speed quickly until it must have hit at least 15-miles-per-hour.
And time stood still. The little metal trolley was moving too fast for me to jump out and stop it, so I smiled, relaxed and settled back in my seat to enjoy the show. I've always resented how materialistic and egotistical people here are about their vehicles: pretty, prissilly spotless 4WD pickup trucks that never get dusty, much less go offroad, their covered beds never even used to haul firewood; huge gas-guzzling SUVs taking up two parking spaces; luxury cars, BMWs and Audis and Caddies, that in America are bought as status-symbols; and all the other bright shiny "expressions of people's personalities" and "extensions of themselves" that to me have always just been a way to get from point A to point B, a necessary evil of the modern world.
So it was like watching TV, only more fun, because it was real. That little shopping cart was going to smash into someone's car, there was nothing I could do about it, and I'd just have to enjoy the spectacle of gratuitous property damage, Nature's revenge for the exhaust fumes that suffocate it and the concrete that binds the Earth like a straight-jacket.
But the wind shifted, the cart suddenly changed course, and now it was headed straight for me! I barely threw it into reverse-gear in time. It missed me by a foot, caromed off the rear bumper of the truck parked in front of me, then bashed into the metal rail of one of the corrals where shopping trolleys are supposed to be returned. The cart just sat there then as if knew it was home.
I laughed at the irony and felt vain. In the old days I never cared what happened cosmetically to my car. I would've been almost as amused at the satisfying CRUNCH and dent on my own car as I would if it hit someone else's.
I guess it's a good thing this isn't fiction. If this were fiction, I might feel obligated to scrounge up a moral to the story. As it is, I can think what I like, so I'll choose to chuckle and think that clever little trolley just wanted to return to the cart corral all by itself. Mother Nature wasn't warning me about vanity and hypocrisy.
Still, when I get my first dent in my new car, I promise to laugh about that, too.
~
10/18/2004 10:06:00 AM
Friday, October 15, 2004
Gloss Black
There's no such thing, is there? Black is black because it absorbs all the colors of the spectrum and reflects none of them. But how can something be shiny if it isn't reflecting light? So there must be something shiny mixed into gloss black paint, right? Because black is always, by nature, flat or matte?
Gloss black, as a color, doesn't exist?
~
10/15/2004 01:20:00 PM
Friday Classic
Ray Harryhausen
No computers, just a camera, some models, and painstaking stop-motion photography.
All hail the chief!
Genuflect with me now: "We're not worthy!"
~
10/15/2004 01:07:00 PM
Thursday, October 14, 2004
The Alarm Clock
SATURDAY
6:30 A.M. Saturday morning: The new alarm clock goes off.
He wipes hair out of his eyes but sees only blackness as the alarm beeps obnoxiously, grating like sandpaper on his eardrums. Fumbles at the blankets, removes them from over his head, still cannot see the clock in unfair morning darkness. Gropes blindly and finds the offending device, pulls it close to his face, he feels the clock until he finds what seems to be the 'OFF' button and presses it; the annoying sound stops.
6:45 A.M. Saturday morning: The new alarm clock goes off again.
He thrashes this time, throws sheets and blankets off, knocks over a lamp as he grabs the clock. "I turned you OFF!" he yells. "Why won't you let me sleep in?! It's SATURDAY!" Again he feels for the button and pushes; again the noise goes away. "Hmph, must've hit the 'SNOOZE' button," he moans as he collects the bedclothes, pulls them over himself in a dishevelled cotton disarray, and immediately passes into welcome blackness.
7:00 A.M. Saturday morning: The new alarm clock goes off again.
Curses are hurled and lights snapped on, the clock inspected carefully for the button that says 'OFF' this time; he assumes a fœtal position on top of the covers now, whimpers softly, and searches in vain for sleep.
7:15 A.M. Saturday morning: The alarm clock DOES NOT GO OFF. But he cannot sleep anyway, and so rises weary and exhausted and heads for the kitchen and coffee.
What is this, he thinks, this hell we have created for ourselves?
SUNDAY
6:30 A.M. Sunday morning: The new alarm clock goes off.
He briefly considers exploding, losing it, throwing the clock across the room the way he did the previous clock and pouncing, just diving lithely out of the bed on it like a panther on its prey, pummelling the plastic casing until he bloodies his fists on circuit-boards and chips smashed into bits and ground into the carpet.
Everyone should do this once, he thinks. The satisfaction was immense, the release and relief of tensions that had been building since the first time he ever heard the whining rasping whinge of an alarm clock, that sound calculated to jangle one's nerves and disturb you out of sleep to face the day shaken, angry and confused. Afterwards he'd tossed pieces in the air like confetti and ripped at the wires like an animal tearing with its claws. Then he felt so good he went out for coffee and the morning paper and a cigarette at a local café. And he doesn't even smoke.
But this time: No. He composes himself, does not allow himself the luxury of the light. I must learn, he tells himself. He caresses the surface of the clock with the tips of his fingers, feels it gently like a lover until he finds the 'OFF' button, the RIGHT button ... then he presses softly with quiet anticipation, imagining himself on a bomb squad hoping he has cut the right wire ... and the sound stops.
He releases the clock, rolls back away from it ... then reaches for it again; he finds the 'OFF' button, once again memorizing the clock's landscape with his hands. One more time he repeats the process, and then he is confident and done.
He sighs and breathes in the peaceful silent air, stretches like a cat, and falls back into the mattress in blissful repose until late morning.
MONDAY
6:30 A.M. Monday morning: The new alarm clock goes off.
In a haze of half-sleep he smiles to himself. I got you now, he thinks contentedly, and his hands, now properly trained, move gracefully without thought, muscle-memory guiding him to the 'OFF' button, which he presses lovingly now before drifting back to the unfinished dream that beckons him.
11:00 A.M. Monday morning: He wakes with a start.
Something's wrong, he thinks.
"MY GOD, IT'S MONDAY! I'M THREE HOURS LATE FOR WORK!
"I WAS SUPPOSED TO HIT THE 'SNOOZE' BUTTON!"
He leaps out of bed and dashes for his clothes, images of clocks and hammers dancing manic in his head.
~
10/14/2004 10:38:00 AM
Tuesday, October 12, 2004
Ut! Catbutt!
Tracy (katgyrl, Argy's host) has a cat named Finn who has odd sleeping habits:
(Click image to enlarge.)
(I stole the image from Tracy's Flickr photostream here.)
This set of magnets is available at various spots on the 'Net:
Five catbutt magnets plus a bonus free hairball magnet!
This background is available for free (non-commercial) use from SoloSong right here. Thanks, SoloSong!
And this fellow mentions being "Whisked Away In a Panic Of Cat Butts" on his weblog. I'm not sure what he's talking about, but I get a kick out of the phrase. "Whisked Away In a Panic Of Cat Butts." A-heh!
Ut! Catbutt!
ArgyBarple: bringing you "the Best of the Web."
~
P.S. Yaaay! George is home!
10/12/2004 01:43:00 PM
Monday, October 11, 2004
Breaking (Improbable) News
Politician Does the Right Thing
On Wednesday (9/29), California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law Senate Bill 1520, legislation to ban the cruel force feeding of ducks and geese to produce pate de foie gras-- the fatty, pathologically-enlarged liver of force-fed ducks or geese. The passage of SB 1520 is a landmark, since it marks the first time in the U.S. that a legislature has completely banned an egregious farming practice based on its cruelty. The law will take effect in 7 & 1/2 years, in 2012.Confused Speculation Follows
...
With the signing of SB 1520 into law, California joins at least 13 countries throughout Europe that prohibit foie gras production. Additionally, the California legislation goes one step beyond other existing foie gras bans by prohibiting the sale of foie gras in the entire state.
(-via HUMANELINES, a publication of the HSUS)
Why did Schwarzenegger do the right thing? Is the foie gras industry too small to pit money and lobbying power against Schwarzenegger's re-election?
Will the bill be overturned before it takes effect in 2012, allowing Schwarzenegger to play the hero without consequence in the meantime? Or has Schwarzenegger actually decided to be the hero he played in so many film roles ...
... potentially alienating the greedy lobbying groups without which most politicians cannot survive? Or is Schwarzenegger politically suicidal, unaware of the maxim "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished"?
Political analysts across the globe are shaking their heads in mass confusion; some have suffered minor breakdowns, their brains temporarily short-circuited from the shock of seeing a legislator, a Republican no less, on the right side of an issue.
In related news:
Schwarzenegger bans smoking in prisonsComments on the website MetaFilter included:
Decision could save $280 million in related health care costs
Tuesday, September 28, 2004 Posted: 8:19 AM EDT
Schwarzenegger, who set up a tent outside his smoke-free state office to accommodate his taste for a good cigar, signed a bill Monday [Sept. 29] barring tobacco from state prisons.
(-via CNN)
Oh My God. There's gonna be riots. The inmates are gonna kill each other, wipe themselves clean out. This is worse than if they actually got all the drugs outta the prisons....before the MetaFilter conversation (link here) degenerated into a 100+-comment shouting match between smokers and non-smokers (as usual.)
Of course, the guards and prisoners who smuggle smokes in are gonna be Kings.
[This is BAD.]
WHAT THE HELL IS ARNOLD THINKING? NUTCASE.
Then again, if they actually find a way (such as hiring small armies of extra guards) to enforce this, it just might work:
"Hell no, man, I ain't goin ta jail. I was scared straight. My brother got sent down and HE HAD TO QUIT SMOKING!"
posted by Shane at 11:41 AM PST on September 28
Holy shit. Has the Governor ever watched an episode of Oz?
posted by Potloaf at 11:42 AM PST on September 28
Sweet Lord.
First of all, a prison full of killers, rapists and bank robbers undergoing nicotine withdrawal is a frightening prospect for those who have to work there, I'd imagine.
Plus it just creates another opportunity for contraband and smuggling.
posted by jonmc at 12:51 PM PST on September 28
Further irony was noted in the MetaFilter thread:
Schwarzenegger's Calif. Cigar Tent Flooded OutIt should perhaps be considered, however, that many prisoners actually quit cigarettes and even caffeine as they adopt a healthy lifestyle of constant exercize designed to beat the boredom of prison life.
Wed Sep 22, 2004 08:33 PM ET
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's favorite smoking den, an outdoor retreat he favors for meetings with state powerbrokers, has been temporarily snuffed out by flooding, aides said on Wednesday
(-Reuters.com)
Still, the question lingers:
ARNOLD, HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND?
Then again, there is no need to worry about losing the votes of felons, as they do not have the right to vote.
~
---------------
More info on easy ways you can help prevent cruelty to animals is available at HUMANElines, a joint project of The HSUS and the Fund for Animals. Click HERE to do your part and be a hero yourself.
---------------
(The author is very proud that he can actually spell "Schwarzenegger" with a reasonably low margin of error, however he cut-and-pasted it every time while writing this.)
10/11/2004 11:53:00 AM
Sunday, October 10, 2004
Silhouetted leaves and birdfeeder. Clouds beyond.
(Click image = larger. Photo by me.)
10/10/2004 11:47:00 PM
Friday, October 08, 2004
Friday Classics
Photographer Richard Avedon, who passed away last week, seen here with Audrey Hepburn (1956.)
ArgyBarple has featured Fish on a Bike and Einstein on a bike, and now we add Audrey Hepburn on a bike with her dog, photographed by Ted Avery. Avery, who also founded the Motion Picture and Television Photo Archive (MPTV), was famous for his candid portraits of the stars, such as Brando at breakfast and Rock Hudson just out of the shower.
...and one more Avedon from 1959 titled:
"Audrey Hepburn and Art Buchwald with Simone, Barbara Mullen, Frederick Eberstadt, and Dr. Reginald Kernan, Evening Dresses by Balmain, Dior, Patou, Maxim's, Paris"
In her later years Audrey Hepburn devoted nearly all her energy to charity as UNICEF's international Goodwill Ambassador. The Audrey Hepburn Memorial Fund at UNICEF, which has raised over $1 million dollars for educational programs in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Sudan and Somalia, continues her work, as does the Audrey Hepburn Children's Fund .
~
10/08/2004 01:32:00 PM
Wednesday, October 06, 2004
Rimed Lime Rinds, No Rhymes
rimeRime is not lime, and it is unlikely that a lime will ever have a rime of frost or even splattered mud, as limes grow on trees (or bushes), well above the ground and in warm climates. Limes have rinds, though. Or do they? While a rind is technically a peeling or outer skin of a fruit, we most often use "rind" to describe the skin after it has been peeled. Rinds are what you throw away, or maybe feed to pigs or a goat, if you have any. So most often a fruit does not have a rind, but has just recently lost it.
n.
1. A coating of ice, as on grass and trees, formed when extremely cold water droplets freeze almost instantly on a cold surface.
2. A coating, as of mud or slime, likened to a frosty film: “A meal couldn't leave us feeling really full unless it laid down a rime of fat globules in our mouths and stomachs” (James Fallows).
lime
n.
1. A spiny evergreen shrub or tree (Citrus aurantifolia), native to Asia and having leathery leaves, fragrant white flowers, and edible fruit.
2. The egg-shaped fruit of this plant, having a green rind and acid juice used as flavoring.
-also-
1. See calcium oxide.
2. Any of various mineral and industrial forms of calcium oxide differing chiefly in water content and percentage of constituents such as silica, alumina, and iron. Also called quicklime.
rime
n. & v.
Variant of rhyme.
rind
n.
A tough outer covering such as bark, the skin of some fruits, or the coating on cheese or bacon.
-via Dictionary.com.
Me, I got rimed once by standing too close to the curb on a rainy night. The car who splashered me didn't even slow down.
We all have four to six pounds of lime in our bodies, mostly in our bones and teeth. That's calcium oxide-type lime, not the fruit, although there may be someone out there who eats enough limes (or maybe keylime pie) to have a few pounds on hand in his stomach at any time. If this person exists (and the Internet has taught us by now that at least one of every imaginable type of person exists), then he probably uses the bathroom a lot. Vitamin-C in large doses is a potent laxative.
Maybe you've had the wonderful experience of selling your blood plasma for cash, hooked up to a machine that removes some of your blood, centrifuges what it wants out of it, then returns the rest (all through the same Intravenous tube) mixed with a saline solution that uses sodium-citrate as its salt content, repeating this in a cycle until the machine gets its fifteen- or twenty-dollars worth. As if the process of having blood cycled in and out of a hole in your arm isn't disturbing enough, the place I visited liked to play horror movies on a wall-mounted TV for the doners to watch, grisly slashers and such. I sat through 40 minutes of Pumpkinhead once, and while it may have taken my mind off the needle in my vein, the gore content of the movie did little to keep my stomach settled.
Some needy people do this as often as four or five times a month, the maximum allowed, and suffer, in addition to the potential poverty and sometimes alcoholism that drove them there in the first place, the further indignity of constant diahrrea from the high vitamin-C content of the saline solution. But they never have to worry about scurvy, the result of vitamin-C deficiency, which "Limey" sailors combatted by sucking on limes.
At least the Plasma nurses are often cheerful. Once, on a visit to Akron's "Plasma Alliance," three nurses or med students or phlebotmists or whatever they are kept me occupied as I waited for the person who would insert my IV by telling me how bad this person was, She's a newbie, she always bruises people with the needle, Gee, I sure hope you don't bleed all over the floor like the last person she stuck, etc. Of course they were just funnin' me, and the IV slipped in so quick I didn't even feel it. Thanks a lot, ladies. I guess you got me back for the time I pulled my bandage off too soon and squirted one of you.
Giving plasma for money and using it to buy beer for an easy buzz (because of depleted blood) was a favorite old pastime of my punk friends way back in the day, but I once had a doctor tell me that he and his friends did the same thing back in med school. Not only that, but they would also go out to eat after getting drunk, then inevitably one or more of them would throw up, blame it on the food and refuse to pay. Remember this the next time a dignified-looking man or woman in a white coat prescribes drugs to you or stitches a wound. Always get a second opinion before agreeing to surgery...
If you happen to be a murderer like Londoner Harry Dobkin who killed his wife in 1941 during World War II, you may want to take note of the difference between builder's lime and quicklime. Harry buried the body under the ruins of Vauxhall Baptist Chapel, thinking she would go unnoticed in the flood of air raid victims that most often went uninvestigated by the police. However, Harry coated the body in builder's lime, which preserved it, rather than quicklime, which would have accelerated the decay. The police later found the body and noticed a broken bone in her neck, convicted him of strangling his wife, and carried out the death sentence in 1942.
The following trees have an unlikely rime of snow, unlikely because I took the pictures on the night of March 22, 2002. Ah, sweet Springtime in Ohio!
(Click the thumbnails for larger images, if you're so inclined.)
None of this rhymes, but for that you can click here for the chanty of an old sea salt.
And through the drifts the snowy clifts~
Did send a dismal sheen:
Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken—
The ice was all between.
10/06/2004 10:16:00 AM
Tuesday, October 05, 2004
My cat friend Buffy beams at me from the warmth of a ray of sunshine. She's a little warm ray of sunshine herself.
~
10/05/2004 11:41:00 AM
Monday, October 04, 2004
Torn from the Pages
of the Real World
Raw Deal
Overheard at a K-Mart SuperStore:
"I made eight-bucks-an-hour for thirty five years as a Treamsters tuck driver."
Wow. He really got shafted. I always thought the Treamsters paid well. Especially for driving a tuck.
He must've had some tying trimes.
Do the Math
Witnessed at a local WalMart:
A customer buying rubber gloves and three packages of Wet-Wipes (with 80 Wet-Wipes apiece.)
Something really icky, I don't want to know what, is going to get Wet-Wiped 240 times.
~
10/04/2004 09:58:00 PM
Road Signs
An´gles n. pl.
(Ethnol.) An ancient Low German tribe, that settled in Britain, which came to be called Engla-land (Angleland or England). The Angles probably came from the district of Angeln (now within the limits of Schleswig), and the country now Lower Hanover, etc."Angle Park" (Chorus, Big Country/Lyrics by Stuart Adamson)
-Webster's Online
In Angle ParkI always thought it was "The fountains cry," which brings to mind statues in the rain or in fountains, as well as sadness, of course. Still, I love the imagery. Sounds a bit like a commentary on a hard place settled by the westward advance of the Germanic tribes who harried the shores of the island.
The lights are dim, the statues grim
In Angle Park
The fountains crack
In Angle Park...
But I can't help but think Adamson got his idea from, well, traffic:
angle-park v. t. & i. 1.
to park (a road vehicle) at an angle to the curb; - contrasted with parallel-park.Word games. Very cool. Of course, there's a street in Edinburgh named "Angle Park Terrace" and also an Angle Park in South Australia. But, nah -- it had to be the road sign. Adamson, however, who is notoriously modest and self-effacing with regards to his lyrics, would probably just blame Angle Park on too many pints at the pub or maybe too much weed.
-Webster's Online
The very cool Tarrama from MetaFilter recently hooked me up with the goods, a very cool care-package from a wonderful place. It's something of a crime that you can only buy musk-flavored candies in the Southern Hemisphere, specifically Australia, New Zealand, etc, and Tasmania where Tarrama lives, so she helped me out. They taste a bit like what you'd expect: bubblegum flavor with a subtle (or not-so-subtle) bit of musk-flavored perfume. Mmmm...
I've never been to Oz, but I have too many anecdotes of the Aussies I've hung with to go into them right now. So I'll just say that Aussies and Tassies are some of my favorite people in the world.
Here are some stickers from the care package:
The Tasmanian Tiger, Tasmanian Wolf, or thylacine is a unique and wonderful creature seemingly out of a fantasy novel. Looking like a five-foot long tiger-striped dog, it is actually a marsupial with a pouch like a kangaroo. The Tasmanian Devil, named for the eerie whistling-growl of its bark, is a marsupial as well. North America, in contrast, is impoverished, its only marsupial being the nocturnal Opossum.
Tasmanian Tigers are thought to be extinct since 1936, although a dozen or so unconfirmed sightings occur every year. We can only hope...
Cheers to Tasmania and its legendary beasties!
~
10/04/2004 01:18:00 PM
Sunday, October 03, 2004
'Tis That Season
This would be "L'il Devil," small plastic cake decoration and beloved childhood totem. He has something of the stately air of a good-natured general overseeing the world's mischief, mascot to harmless deviltry, happy yet dignified despite the drop-seat on the back of his pyjama-like costume.
Salute!
~
10/03/2004 01:03:00 PM
Friday, October 01, 2004
Happy Friday Classics
Captain Kangaroo, Mr Green Jeans and friends.
Wow. He has rank, he's a Captain ... but he's Captain Kangaroo. How cool. He should have been on the Enterprise with Kirk and Spock and the gang. Just imagine Captain Kangaroo decked out in a Federation uniform with spiffy shiny black boots, a communicator, and a phaser. But the phaser would always be set on stun. 'Cuz he's a nice guy, and he wouldn't want to set a bad example. You know, for kids.
And don't even get me going about Mr Green Jeans. He was my rebel role-model. I mean, everybody wore blue jeans, but HE WORE GREEN JEANS! Hence his name, one might suppose. I think he was a gardener, too. Gardening is cool. Mr Green Jeans was, like, a pioneer of the Green Movement. He was ahead of his time.
I also seem to remember rabbits on the show often. Not sure why. But lots of rabbits. Maybe they bred their own, these Captain Kangaroo TV Show people, to save money. Rabbits are cool, too. Don't get me started on rabbits.
Have a good weekend.
Captain Kangaroo: Bob Keeshan / Mr Green Jeans: Hugh Brannum / Rabbits: Unknown Character Actors (Air dates 1955 - 1984)
~
10/01/2004 01:25:00 PM
Embarrassment
n.
pron.: em - bare - ass - ment
1. The feeling resulting from being caught bare-assed, with your pants down, perhaps because you tried to fill big britches without the forethought to wear a belt.
-from the ArgyBarple Dictionary
(forthcoming)
~
10/01/2004 05:45:00 AM
