Sunday, Puppy Sunday: I will you to obey me!

Dear Mommeh:

we's likes naps on teh bed wif yew.

we's wants to stay here always, unless there's treats somewhere else.

yew must obey me.

see how proper I am with my ankles demurely crossed?

I'm never naughty, ever.
You will do as I say.

I hyp-mo-tized yew.

That is all.

sined: Praline

not to worry...

If I don't post for a day or two, know that I'm fine and cozied up with the best dogs ever. It's just that my internet service has been spotty-- i suspect the hub of my internet company lost power, as has much of the community surrounding me now.

I'm stocked up on provisions, and I have plenty of candles and good stuff to read, should it come to that.

Friday I stayed home from work as the roadway was a bit of an iceskating rink. I watched the last few episodes of the BBC production of Little Dorrit I'd rented last Sunday. I was so glad to have that, and this production is superb. In the usual drip-fest vein of Charles Dickens, this story is the usual sort of social commentary and in light of recent economic times, seems a particularly poignant one.

Watch it. I'm preloading a Sunday Puppy post, and I'll be back in the swing here again when weather and utilities permit. Cheers!

LOLL Puppehs

Home from work for the day due to impassable roads, we watched BBC series on the bed and the puppehs wanted this day to never end. They was napping. They was napping mighty hard.

It was pretty sweet!

c-c-c-c-cold

My boss came up to me Thursday afternoon and told me to finish the call I was on and to go home, that she'd heard the roads out where I live were getting treacherous. I stopped by the store and got the makings of a bomb-shelter supply of Frito pies, bottled water and biccies for tea and hightailed it for the barn. Got home, hauled the loot into the house and came right back out to snap a photo of the trees out front. Honestly, everything seems encased in crystal, especially the trees. A block from my house is a pine tree where every needle looks meticulously dipped in glass. It's all kind of enchanted. When the wind blows, the bending boughs crackle and groan. I don't know how long all this will last, but it sure is purty. No doubt I'll be staying home from work today. Since I can't work, I'm taking time to round up dust buffaloes and attacking a close encounters pile of laundry. Good thinking of me to leave myself something to do whilst snowed in, eh?

Brrrr!

Have you ever been picked up by the fuzz? *in which Restraint rules the day*

No, but you've been dragged around by the tits?

Wednesday night, I hooked up with Hols and Christina for chicken fried ribeyes at Sweetie Pie's Ribeyes in Decatur. We had a grand time, and cut up mightily. I'm thrilled to see Christina going native and seeming like she's belonged to Texas all along. Soon I expect to see her in a proper pair of ropers. Holly gave me the most delightful Christmas ornament, EVAR, and it's going to hang year-round in my house. Pictures to follow. Was grand to have a hen party with two of my favorite people. We must have looked like trouble, because they stuck us in the naughty corner of the restaurant, away from the proper folks. *snicker*

So, I drank several glasses of iced tea, like you do-- I am, after all, from the South. So, anyhoo, I was tooling home and was about 100 miles from Decatur, when I come over a hill and see a car flip on its lights and come across the median from the other direction.

Oh, crap. Is that a light bar on that car? Hmm. I wonder who they're going to pull over?

I look around and there wasn't nobody there but us chickens. Just me and the crickets on a lonesome Texas highway.

Merdey-poo. On go the lights in teh rearview. He's coming right for me. Holy flaming poopsticks. This is going to be expensive.

I pull over when he's still about 200 yards behind me. No faking this one out.

He came up to the passenger side and I flicked on teh dome light and handed my license, insurance proof and CHL license through the passenger side window. He shone a light into the back of my SUV and looked at the rolled up rug and said "what are you hauling?"

In a supreme act of self-control, I resisted the urge to say "apparently, ass." I explained the rug was a gift from my dad when I visited Dallas last week.

He asked where I came from, where I was heading. I said I'd just come from Decatur and was on my way home.

"Why'd you go to Decatur?"
"I met my girlfriends for dinner at Sweetie Pie's"
"why such a hurry?"
" I have to go to the bathroom." Here I resisted the urge to invoke the half gallon of iced tea that wanted out.

He handed back the CHL and took the driver license and insurance paper back to his car. I sat there waiting, thinking how a moment's inattention had messed me up royally. I think I haven't gotten a speeding ticket in at least 17 years, and 14 years since I got a warning... This was going to be more painful than last time, I think.

After a brief amount of time, the nice officer came back and handed me my things back along with a piece of paper which read "warnings - no penalty assessed for the following offenses 1. Speeding over limit"

*whew!*
mebbe shoulda bought a lottery ticket, but I'll settle for not getting a ticket of the other kind.

more hating on Haiti...

This Reuters article asks "will endemic corruption suck away aid to Haiti?"

Duh.

In the article a Haitian said "The U.S. government needs to come here to help the Haitian people."

Um, I thought we already were. I mean, we've sent gajillions of plastic water bottles over to them. Commenter SwampRabbit astutely observed those very bottles will likely be cobbled together to ferry much of their populace to our shores.

At least they'll be recycling.

Stress can really work a number on a person...

...and no denying it.


Is Obama having an acne outbreak?

MONDAY NIGHT CHAT FROM GUNBLOGGER CONSPIRACY:

<1>: Oh, did you hear Obama apparently said that he'd "rather be a really good one term president than..." \
<2>: hahaha, too late for that
<3>: he's going down faster than a $5 hooker
<4>: hyuk!
<5>: He probably won't be able to do that either 1.
<2>: would he settle for being a dismally bad one term president?

I love my friends!

My First Tumbleweed!!!

I had big plans for rounding up some tumbleweeds, staking them in the lawn and festooning them with fairy lights for Christmas, but then that nasty business came along with pneumonia and I decorated nary a whit for the holidays.

I went out of my door Saturday morning and had my first adopted stray tumbleweed since moving out west in April. *squee!*

It's not very big, but it's a cute litte tumbleweed and it's mine, all mine. Yays!

They say you never forget your first tumbleweed, and I shan't. I shall keep it forever. Er, or until it falls apart. Or until I get bored.

Meh.

But for now: squeeeeee!

Sunday, Puppy Sunday: crazy, but that's how it goes...

Yes, I've posted a year or so ago, but I came across it Saturday and it kicked over my giggle box. They do this when they go snortal, and it's not actually hostile, but the sounds they make when they play-fight are hilarious. I think this photo makes them look a little bit nuts.

...speaking of sock puppet theatre...

I knew sock puppets cropped up in blog comments, generally defending the indefensible and probably generated by the dubious party themselves, but I didn't realize that with the whole of the mainstream meatia in their back pocket, someone-- oh, say, in the White House-- would have need of their own sock puppet campaignery.

Hyuk.

Nice to see a gumshoe bent in a reporter from Cleveland. Hope to see more like that. Cleveland does rock, doesn't it?

Glenn Miller à la Puppini Sisters

Enjoy your Friday. :)

New 'Vogs.

Spats! Spats! Spats! Spats! (sung to the tune of Spam! Spam! Spam! Spam!)

New from John Fluevog comes the Libby Smith.



Named for a gritty pioneer woman, I love love love this boot!

Good morning here's the news, and all of it is good.

It was jolly decent of Ted Kennedy to go ahead and shuffle off this mortal coil so they could hold an election in Massachusetts for a change.

I don't know about you, but today I'm very happy that Jay over at MArooned has something to celebrate. It's nice to know that there may be more kindred spirits in Massachusetts than anyone imagined.

****************

Things have been very roller-coastery of late, but I expect to have good news to tell you soon. Also, with recent maintenance and dad's help, I'm getting about 50 miles more per tank of gas. Yays!

All the same, I'm glad this is a short week.

Dennis Hopper to divorce...

...nothing funny to say about this one, just that it's sad that on what has been described as his deathbead (he is apparently mortally ill with prostate cancer), he's divorcing his wife of 12 years. What's bizarre is that she's 41 years old and sort of has that dried-up husk look so many LA women get in middle age. I'd expect someone at 41 to still look at least half-way ripe. Anyway, she looks stringy and emaciated. But i digress... Anyway, even if his wife couldn't bear the sight of him, she really should suck it up and be gracious to him at what is an extraordinarily painful moment. They have a young child Dennis will not see to adulthood. Sad, all around.

As for Dennis, I don't blame him for filing divorce, if she's treating him badly.

I always think of him in one of my all-time favorite scenes of filmdom, as Christian Slater's dad in True Romance, script by Tarantino. Sometimes when you find yourself at a disadvantage, a gift of gab is all you have to work with. Brilliant scene with Christopher Walken as a mob heavy who's demanding information of Hopper. As Hopper gets his last digs in, the soundtrack starts a light piano version of Delibes' Flower Duet from Lakme, a lovely counterpoint to the verbal dance the two cinema heavyweights are doing in the scene.
[NSFW, Language - very offensive scene, very violent - you have been warned]

Not to be rude, but...

Did you hear about the building in Sweden that sort of collapsed when 20 Weight Watchers devotees met there?

Well, not to be rude, but I was wondering if perhaps the structure was built by IKEA?

I mean, I've obtained a couple flimsy things from them, and they're Swedish. But they've got ossum meatballs, for a cheap, fast meatball fix. Love that lingonberry sauce, too.

*******************************
Went to Dallas to take care of some bidness and I went for a pedicure in hopes of soothing some of my physical distress and two of my former residents were at the salon. Wild coincidence, considering they didn't arrive together and didn't appear to be more than acquaintances. :) Got stuck in some traffic by the arena after a Stars game, and DO NOT MISS the frelling traffic.


Thought I had a bearing going bad on my car this weekend, but it turned out to be the tires. Not thrilled that they are wearing so poorly (were meant to be high-mileage, but they roar), but I'm relieved there wasn't a big nasty bearing job to be done. My dad's a real hero for sorting out the whole problem. Love my dad-- he's such a good guy. :)

I hope you have a great week!

*******************************

Sunday, Puppy Sunday: bringing teh kewt to Tea Time

Puppies just lurve the smell of tea. Well, maybe it's the cream and sugar they find so enticing. On the other paw, we have seen a Praline post-digestion product with a teabag tag embedded, and she has been caught chomping teabags. How she got them is a mystery to us, but Chuy probably engineered the whole heist. You can always recognize Chuy: he's the chiweenie with the pencil behind his ear muttering to himself as he works his sliderule and calculates angles.

SO cute. My babies. I love my dogs.

Sicky...

Buying salad stuff for dinner Thursday night, I happened to pick up stuff for tea at work. I got a box of Twinings Lady Grey tea, a box of raw sugar packets and a box of Mini-Moos, those cute little room-temp half and half packets.

Little did I know that I'd be in agony at work halfway through the day Friday and need something warm and soothing to drink. I dragged my aching carcass to the break room and filled my lovely mug with hot water from the coffee maker, and I swilled tea and somehow made it through the day.

Thank goodness I've a 3 day weekend in which to recover. Ugh.

Oprah holidays in Haiti

Apparently Oprah Winfrey has dragged her big ball of dung down to Haiti-- as if they didn't have a big enough mess there already. I wonder, can there be any luxury accommodations left for her, or is she staying offshore in a luxury yacht? Apparently she was a colossal pain in the arse when she showed up in Amarillo for the whole beef trial thingie. I can't imagine she's suddenly self-effacing and genuine with those people down there. Sean Penn boating through New Orleans comes to mind.

Gosh. Can anyone have a proper disaster without celebrities along? Apparently not. Why don't they do the decent thing and just send money? Can't miss a photo op, I suppose.

********************************

Coming soon - Tales of Chuy the locksmith. Apparently, the boy is sporting a pair of thumbs which he cleverly keeps concealed while humans are looking. Scamp.

Oh, and Praline's a mean drunk.

Happy Birthday Clobunny.

Um, Ew. Ewe.

In Turkey, a vet performed a Caesarian on a sheep and a human-faced, uh, lamb, was delivered. Apparently, not long ago, a goat in Zimbabwe had a human-faced baby, too:

A goat from Zimbabwe gave birth to a similar youngster in September 2009. The
mutant baby born with a human-like head stayed alive for several hours until the frightened village residents killed him.

Goodbye, cruel world!


I'm in paroxysms of disgust, and yet, that last bit made me giggle like, well, like a loony giggling thing.

I ask you: what kind of sick society would have something bee-zarre like that show up and not keep it around long enough to celebrate it with its own Facebook page or to at least photograph it? Anyhoo, the Turkish sheep thingie looks smug-- doesn't it?-- like a politician, even. It rather looks like Dick Gephardt. Um, was he in Turkey about 4 months ago, slipping some Roophies in some comely young sheep's trough? I think we have a right to know what's going on here.

Yuck. Anyhoo, I figure if the locals are right and the human-faced goat was the product of an unholy union between a human man and a lady goat, well, I figure this sort of thing would have been popping up all over the place before now, don't you? I mean, I know sometimes a sheep really does need to be pushed through a hedgerow, but... Then again, this does seem to dovetail with the early American colonists' obsession with monstrous births.


Anyway, I wonder what they call a redneck in Zimbabwe? Or Turkey?

And speaking of, one time I asked Ambulance Driver the difference between a Louisiana Redneck and a Coonass, and he said

"Rednecks have sex with livestock, but Coonass get emotionally involved."

Nice Knockers and Other Desireables

Seriously! Look at this door knocker: Want one.

Whether you're updating the family manse, doing a full restoration or just looking for a few elegant details to put a bit of a flourish on your homestead, VanDyke's site is chock-full of hardware and home appointments period-correct in both style and construction.

I'm slobbering over these cabinet pulls and these.

*le sigh*

Anyway, if you're working around your place at all, mosey on over to VanDykes site and have a look around. Also be sure to scour their discount den -- phenomenal bargains to be had there. Good stuff. Srsly!

I'm loving the old-world iron hardware. And oh, to have such a door or fence worthy of such hardware!

h/t to Lin at If The Creek Don't Rise who knows from fine restoration

fer feck's sake

Did you know there's a huge community of folks who scour the internet daily for new information about Avatar? I'm not making that up. Some of them admit to feeling suicidal because they've had a glimpse of a beautiful world and they see how wonderful life could be and they know this lovely existence is made of unobtanium.

It's all so silly, really. Obviously Pandora totally blows because there were no dogs there. I don't want to live in a world without dogs. Let's wash the bad taste out of our mouths with some baby wiener-dog footage, shall we?


Feel better now? Me too. :)

Moneyfest Destiny Pandora's Bucks Avatar

Up a loincloth, vaguely?

Went to see Avatar this weekend. Set on Pandora, director James Cameron spent oodles of dosh to create this world and then pulls focus from the visual feast by trotting out a bunch of preachy nonsense in the form of the trite, hackneyed cliche. Despite the noble savage browbeatery, the world he created is absolutely stunning, and I do recommend you see it, though with a sizeable chunk of salt in tow. We chose to forego the oogy experience of 3-D.

One thing that was really funny to me was that even though there was no mention of prophecy, this film takes a test-toob Na'vi (Our Hero) and just like old Tyrell's Replicants were more human than human, Our Hero was more Na'vi than Na'vi. Wow, it took a white guy to show those ignunt folks how to really take care of themselves! That's never been done before! *much eyerolling*

Points plus and minus for having Wes Studi voice the Na'vi chieftan character. Magwa understand English very well. Also, the first sight of Sigourney Weaver was as she emerged from a stasis chamber - a nod or a wink to Ripley at the end of a film? *shrug* I'm also giving someone thumbs up for not having a pair of smack-talking sidekicks of dubious parentage for comic relief.

LawDog sizes the whole thing up beautifully:

300 million dollars to perfect digital jiggle.

Yep. That's about the size. This'll probably play much better if you wait for the DVD and then just play Dark Side Of The Moon. Or somesuch.

Sunday, Puppy Sunday: cold puppehs edition

Praline: We know we're not supposed to be on the bed, but we's mighty cold. Can we stay up here this one time, pleasepleaseplease, pretty please?

Chuy: Shut it, Sis! Just play possum and she'll leave us alone. Act casual. She can't resist us when we're adorable and oblivious.

Interesting recent crop circles...

I think they're really trying to tell us something.



Said to be found in a field near Lubbock airport.

Barber of Seville Overture

The first opera I ever saw was a Dallas Opera production of Rossini's The Barber of Seville, featuring the American operatic stage debut of Cecilia Bartoli. There are a few operas whose overtures excel the music of the opera. In my opinion, Rossini's Guillaume Tell (which we all remember from Bugs and Elmer) is not nearly so engaging as the music which heralds its arrival. In other operas like the former two I mentioned, the music is bursting with the promise of the grandiosity to come in the evening. That first night, I was besotted when I saw all those people got up in wild costume, running around and yelling in a very fancy way. I thought "I can do that." And I can, too.

Even if you are not a fan of opera, even if you don't mean to stay for the entire performance, you really should at least once in your life show up for the experience of the Overture. I recommend Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro or The Barber of Seville. In TBOS, the first strains of the orchestra are quiet, tight as a drum and their plaintive whisper commands attention in a way most stimulating. The music builds and recedes, each musical idea planting the seed which will later germinate into great billowing swags of musical motifs in the form of arias and lush orchestration. It's all there in that first, appetite-whetting taste at the beginning of the opera. Then you are on the edge of your seat: something exciting is about to happen. This performance will only happen exactly this way once in the history of all the world, and you are there as witness. The energy of that moment is absolutely heady. All the dandies out in their finery, swirling silks, velvets and brocades, and the air is full of exquisite perfumes. Here's to the true alchemy of worlds wrought from a fertile musical idea and a bit of stagecraft.

The Kings Singers perfoming the Overture to The Barber of Seville in Boston, 1982

Serbian Lowrider

LouLou The Baby Shoe™ is in the shop where someone is going to tidy up her dirty, dirty nethers. I would have my car in the shop on the coldest day in yonks, but it couldn't be helped. I think she would have stranded me sometime in the next little bit if she'd not had a proper seeing-to. I've been so busy gadding about all over the country in recent times that it's rather like the inside of a gypsy wagon, only without the fleas. But you might want a tetanus shot before riding in. I did manage to round up most of the stray .22LR skittering around the floorboard, but beyond that, well, bit of a mess, really...

Happy Birthday Miss King!

If you haven't read it, Miss Florence King's Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady is superb.

“I don't suffer fools, and I like to see fools suffer.”

HAVE RPG, WILL TRAVEL

The artist Michal Lisowski has some other phenomenal artwork you can view over here.

found at cgsociety.org

vibrating tool for your eyelashes

When you consider mascara, does the idea of holding a wand with hundreds of little bristle tips up to your eyeball not fill you with enough horror yet? Now you can get a mascara with a vibrating lash wand. Is something wrong with me that I should find this such an immaculately bad idea? I have a hard enough time not sticking a mascara wand in my eyes as it is without the wildcard element of battery-powered vibration. Not. Good. Anyway, can a product safety recall be long in coming?

And speaking of preposterous practices done in the name of beauty, I think eyelash curlers are one of the silliest, scariest things people do to themselves. These horrifying things always make me wonder how many people have ripped a whole lid of lashes out in one go. Gluing fake eyelashes on makes more sense. Did you know there are salons specializing in semi-permanent attachment of mink eyelashes now? *nodding* Yes. Silly. Anyway, eyelash curlers look like some form of torture device or mini guillotine wannabe. Ew. I'm all for enhancing what one has, but only up to a point. As for mink eyelash enhancements, why not go whole-hog and use monkey-fur? You'll have long, muppet-like eyelashes and a monkey will die. Everybody wins!

And while we're on the subject, what is with the spate of frighteningly over-groomed young men everywhere with over-waxed eyebrows? Guys like Edward from Twilight. I'm not saying a fellow should aspire to go around like a wooly booger or anything, but I'd rather see a man with a healthy crop of various facial hair than one who looks like he spends more money and time grooming his eyebrows in a month than most people do in a lifetime. By all means, fellows, tidy up, but don't over-do it. We like you because you are men. Besides, you should be secure enough to let your Lady be the pretty one. And we all think you're wonderful and handsome without too much tinkering, anyway.

My inner steampunk is whimpering for these boots

I swear by my pretty floral bonnet that if I had $210 to spare right now, these little lovelies would be wending their way to me. For now, I can slobber from afar. *sob*

And don't get me started on these:

Doomsday Fatigue

Isn't it tiresome how many shows on Discovery channel or history channel talk about doomsday type scenarios related to things which may happen? They never seem to pass up the opportunity to sound like shrieking Cassandras about the possibility of extinction-level events which might be ahead for our planet. It could be an asteroid impact, the death of all plankton or a super-volcano none of us know we are sitting atop. They want us to take them seriously. They want us to believe and quake in our lovely little shoes. They almost never pass up the opportunity to say that this coming disaster is "not a question of if but when."

Anyway, isn't all the on-the-brink doom and gloom just beyond boring at some point?

And while we're on the topic of the advancing calendar, let's mention that 2012 baloney that was more film promotion than anything related to the end of the Mayan calendar. My sister and I were tsk-tsking over that whole flap and she said something funny. She said The world probably will end in 2012, because that's when the truck will be paid off.

Imagine no truck payment. It's easy if you try.

Dateline 2010, January 2, No Truck Payment, and all is well.

PUPPY NEW YEAR!!!

...and remember that time mama got us outfits and we HATE outfits [YUCKY!] and then we growled and boxed and played Snortal Combat and generally tried to tear the outfits off each other and then we went outside and there was all this white stuff in the air and on the ground and [OOOSH!] and and and we ran around and our feet were cold but the rest of us was warm and these outfits are mebbe not so bad after all.

Especially with the skulls, because we am fierce!