Other stuff

This has been a pretty heavy "art" week for me, personally... not only have I been in overdrive trying to come up with a portrait of this woman that doesn't suck, I've also been producing Christmas cards for my co-workers to go along with the little gifts I got for them. The one above was done using torn paper that I had painted in the colors I wanted. It's only about 3.5" x 5" or so, pretty small stuff. Makes a nice little card size though. I just make them like postcards and write on the back rather than try to do a folded card.

I got this totally awesome Christmas card in the mail from MaggieKatzen today; I need to scan it and show y'all just how cute it is. It's a watercolor painting of a kittycat's paws grabbing an ornament ball, done in a primitive style. Totally perfect and totally appropriate. The kittycat is even a mackerel tabby, a coat pattern which both MaggieKatzen and I are both inordinately fond of.

The Secret Life of Climate Researchers

Iowahawk knocks another one out of the park.

Like other species in the order homo scientifica, the climate researcher gathers and organizes data to lure grant money to the hive. In contrast to those other species, however, the climate researcher has evolved a set of complex violent behaviors to insure any data leaving the hive is perfectly adapted to nature’s most lucrative and sweetest grants. It really is a marvel of natural selection, and explains why the climate researcher continues to thrive in any kind of weather condition.

If you're not one of iowahawks' regular readers, you're missing out. David Burge is pure genius... some of the very best satire on the 'net.

Best Christian T-shirt EVAR

Seen over at Letters From Kamp Krusty.

Not a Blackberry, a HACKberry!

Known by most in these parts as a "trash tree" because it tends to be short-lived and it is plagued with many pests, the humble hackberry is much maligned. My mom, however, has a soft spot in her heart for the hackberry -- she loves its bumpy skin, she says:



The trunk of a hackberry tree, as it ages, gets bumpier and bumpier. Compare it to the bark of an oak:



Very different.

Also in my yard is a fig tree, and the other day I noticed baby figs beginning to develop:



Yay! I love figs.



We have several flowerbeds full of this purplish groundcover.



And then I am delighted to announce the impending arrival of my four o'clocks! Hooray! They are my favorite old-timey flower because they remind me of my delightful great-grandmother who used to grow them in profusion around her house.

Thank you to Chickie who showed me some linky-love in her blog today... you mentioned my nature photos, but your columbines are splendid and I am jealous! I love columbines.

Honk shoo!

Rainy, cold days -- such as we've been experiencing for the past three days here in Texas -- put me in a very snoozy frame of mind. Apparently I'm not alone in this.

A possible use for skwerls

FrankJ has a plan! You want to click that link and read it -- it's not long, but it's pithy and perfect.

Geopolitical humor

Saw this over at BabaluBlog and nearly had to replace my computer keyboard afterward:

What happens when a fly falls into a coffee cup?

The Italian - throws the cup, breaks it, and walks away in a fit of rage.

The German - carefully washes the copy, sterilizes it and makes a new cup of coffee.

The Frenchman - takes out the fly, and drinks the coffee.

The Chinese - eats the fly and throws away the coffee.

The Russian - Drinks the coffee with the fly, since it was extra with no charge.

The Israeli - sells the coffee to the Frenchman, the fly to the Chinese, drinks tea and uses the extra money to invent a device that prevents flies from falling into coffee.

The Palestinian - blames the Israeli for the fly falling in his coffee, protests the act of aggression to the UN, takes a loan from the European Union to buy a new cup of coffee, uses the money to purchase explosives and then blows up the coffee house where the Italian, the Frenchman, the Chinese, the German and the Russian are all trying to explain to the Israeli that he should give away his cup of tea to the Palestinian.

Hah! Mas!

Go ye, therefore, and read it

Noel over at Cold Fury posted something worth reading yesterday:

Party of One

Groooaaaannnnnnnn

If you're even remotely interested in anything Harry Potterish, you simple MUST go read this brief bit of, er, "fanfic" over at Blog d'Elisson:

Nom de Guerre

Time Waster

Dadgummit, Tracey. What have you done to me????

Daffy Duck Splat Game

If you can break 500, you're doing pretty good. I have yet to do it.

Contest!!

Not here, of course... someday when I win the lottery or something, I'll host cool giveaways like this:

IowaGeek's (NON) Scrap Bribing

Prize is either a Flickr Pro account or a Premium Picknik account. I'm gunning for the Flickr Pro account, myself, but that's because I've already got pretty good photo editing software and capabilities.

Y'all go on over there, and leave a comment, and be sure to mention that you saw it HERE on GradualDazzle's Anywhere But Here blog.

Quote of the day

From McGehee:

In 1976, the American people invited Jimmy Carter to become president and mind the public’s business. He wasn’t very good at it, so in 1980 the American people invited him to go home and mind his own damn business. He’s not very good at that either.

[snickersnicker]

Brought to you by the founder of the Get Offa My Lawn Party, with which I have aligned myself now that I have next to no use for the Repubicans.

That wasn't a typo, by the way. It's a Mark Levin-ism.

Hear, hear

30% Less

I know once I stopped worrying about dieting, I thought more about taking care of the people around me. I thought more about making art, music, and laughter in my home. Everybody relaxed more. Until that happened, I hadn’t realized how much time I was wasting on thinking about not eating food, or what it was doing to my personality.

Seen over at Blonde Sagacity

The Open-Toed Shoe Pledge

Y'all need to read this and seriously consider signing it... for the love of all those around you... 'cuz stuff like this is just nasty and definitely NOT SEX-AYYY:

Blizzard Warning for the Rocky Mountains

Or, in other words, TheChickVoice is putting away her turtlenecks.

This is like Punxsutawney Phil or something, isn't it?

Thought for the day

(seen at Internet Bumper Stickers)

Che-worship in Hollywood

Humberto over at Babalu Blog makes a very good point:

This Raul Reyes who just got whacked in Ecuador was a leader of FARC-- who have fought for 40 years, control (tragically) a good portion of Colombia, and have recruited 10,000 fighters (narco/terrorist-murderers- kidnappers.)

Ernesto "Che" Guevara. never fought a guerrilla campaign, recruited fewer than 30 fighters in Bolivia, controlled no territory, wandered around lost for half a year, utterly lost and apparently unable to read a compass--then was captured and his force wiped out at their first genuine firefight.

So who gets a major Hollywood epic title "Guerrilla!" !!? (due out late this year)

There's nothing like having Fidel Castro as a publicity agent--with one drawback: he'll only crank up the "Star-Making Machinery" (as Joni Mitchell sang) after having sent you to "sleep with the fishes."

(Please don't misconstrue this to suggest I sympathize with the mass-murdering FARC. Just an observation.)

Hear, hear.

Human Tetris

Saw this over at Instapundit... I know most of you probably already read Insty, but for those who don't, I thought this vid was kewl (if a bit indicative of too much time on someone's hands):

A roundup of stuff I thought was worth linking to...

What's the right sort of stoning? Frank Key's answers are forthcoming.

Plumcake tears into the idiots at the National Action Against Obesity group.

In case you needed a reason not to patronize bars in West Virginia... (don't read this while you're eating) (I mean it) (shudder)

Democrat governor caught on tape ADMITTING that the SCHIP bill really was a back-door effort to bring about universal health care...

Bedouin ethics?

Dave over at The Glittering Eye always has such thoughtful things to post and say. I hope I can be like him when I grow up.

That aside, though, he has brought to my attention something that Western Polite Society has been skirting and avoiding for some time now concerning the Muslim mindset. Go, read it, and tell me what you think:

Raid and Revenge

After having spent so much intensive time studying the Holocaust, I want to be very, very careful to avoid generalizations about a people group... but at the same time, I think it's valid to question a culture and its norms. Having been brought up in Southern Baptist, fairly fundamentalist churches, I was taught that it was widely accepted that Arabs (being descendents of Ishmael, obviously) were predisposed to be like wild donkeys, untameable and prone to cause trouble with anyone, anywhere... now that seems rather racist. Kind-of like assuming that all Asians like rice, or all Brits have bad teeth.

Yet is there a grain of truth to it? At least, to the extent that people cling to a particular lifestyle or mindset? And are we automatically wrong for exploring the notion?