R. Land: "Loss cat"

OMG. R. Land now has a website for perhaps his most famous work of comic art, the Loss Cat poster.

Foam.

Crackskull Bob: "Grass is not just grass"

See here for the whole story.

No comment

Paradox

In The Flamingo's Smile, one of his collections of brilliant essays from Natural History magazine, Stephen Jay Gould tells a story about

the lady who visits her butcher one Friday morning, seeking a large chicken for the Sabbath meal. The butcher looks in his bin and finds to his chagrin that he has but one scrawny animal left. He takes it out with great fanfare and puts it on the scale. Two pounds.

"Not big enough," the lady says.

He puts it back in the bin, pretends to rummage amidst a large pile of nonexistent alternatives, finally pulls out the same chicken, puts it on the scale, and puts his thumb on the scale. Three pounds.

"Fine," says the lady. "I'll take them both."

Gould adds a footnote:

Dr. S.I. Joseph has since told me that he saw the same lady at a fruit stand later that day. She was asking about the price of grapefruit.

"Two for thirty-five cents," she learned.

"How much for one," she asked.

"Twenty cents," came the reply.

"Fine," she said. "I'll take the other one."

*badum-CHING*

Character

"It's true that my only qualifications are those of character, but when you reach my age character is what you have the most of."

—Mrs. Pollifax,
in The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax,
by Dorothy Gilman

Venn diagram

The Sixth Seal

Walhydra thinks this is way too good not to share...and she thanks her friend Cat for posting it on facebook:

Latest Sarah Palin Speech Opens Sixth Seal

Screen Cleaner

The gentle reader may not have noticed the free Screen Cleaner which Walhydra long ago added to her sidebar.

Try it.

"I am not making this up"

Walhydra's work colleague and buddy Trapdoor Spider has a sister who lives in Venice and works as a freelance journalist for publications such as National Geographic.

Today, Trapdoor reminded Walhydra that her sister has a blog with delightful name of I am not making this up.

Yesterday's post is a beautiful little piece about calicanthus blossoms in the midst of winter.

What caught Walhydra's attention was the shared experience of living in "Upstate New York, where winter comes with multiple personalities, most of whom are not in the mood for jokes."

Yep.

And a beautiful line later in the post:

"Winter doesn’t smell like chiffon steeped in sunrise; winter smells like a constructivist experiment, all angles and sharp points and edges."

Nice.

Odds & ends

Walhydra always walks around with a bunch of little gripes and jokes buzzing in her head.

Usually, she waits until one of them turns itself into a blog post before she publishes it...but that means a lot of stuff just keeps buzzing, or else flies away unshared.

[Not that the gentle reader needs to know about every single mental gnat which annoys Walhydra.]

Today, though, she has decided to do a quick and dirty listing of some of the latest gnats....

First: What is it about guys and spitting?

Walhydra has wondered about this throughout her current incarnation as a gay male would-be writer. Since she was never a "real boy" as a child, she didn't get the usual indoctrination.

Her normal response—that is, after she says "Yuch!"—is, "Don't they know how to swallow?" But she realizes that this must be some sort of "guy thing."

Yes, she did read Tom Sawyer, et al., so she knows about spitting contests. And she knows that an athlete in the midst of competition might need a quick remedy.

But just walking or driving down the street?

Oh, well....

Second: Walhydra doesn't do commercial endorsements. However, she can't resist sharing this delightful new slogan for Panera's, which she saw on a delivery truck this morning:

"Unsliced bread. The best thing since sliced bread."

:-)

Third: One of Walhydra's library colleagues sent her this story, which she just has to share:

Lawyers should never ask a Mississippi grandma a question if they aren't prepared for the answer.
In a trial, a Southern small-town prosecuting attorney called his first witness, a grandmotherly, elderly woman to the stand. He approached her and asked, "Mrs. Jones, do you know me?"

She responded, "Why, yes, I do know you, Mr. Williams. I've known you since you were a boy, and frankly, you've been a big disappointment to me. You lie, you cheat on your wife, and you manipulate people and talk about them behind their backs. You think you're a big shot when you haven't the brains to realize you'll never amount to anything more than a two-bit paper pusher. Yes, I know you."

The lawyer was stunned. Not knowing what else to do, he pointed across the room and asked, "Mrs. Jones, do you know the defense attorney?"

She again replied, "Why yes, I do. I've known Mr. Bradley since he was a youngster, too. He's lazy, bigoted, and he has a drinking problem. He can't build a normal relationship with anyone, and his law practice is one of the worst in the entire state. Not to mention he cheated on his wife with three different women. One of them was your wife. Yes, I know him."

The defense attorney nearly died.

The judge asked both counselors to approach the bench and, in a very quiet voice, said, "If either of you idiots asks her if she knows me, I'll send you both to the electric chair."

You go, girl!

Multi-tasking overload?

If you need to do a self-check to find out if you've been doing too much computer multi-tasking, click here.

Blessèd Be.

Are Quakers Amish?

Walhydra always gets a kick out of Quaker humor, much of which has to do with the fact that no one—including Quakers—appears to know the answer to the question: "What do Quakers really believe?"

Well, thanks to QuakerQuaker, she was recently directed to Haven Kimmel's Blog and found this delightful post: "Bob Loblaw’s Law Blog: Are The Quakers Amish?"

Here's her favorite part:

Q: Are the Quakers the same as the Amish?

A: Although the Amish were founded by a Dutch Anabaptist during the Protestant Reformation, Jakob Ammann, and thus were considered an order of the Swiss Mennonites; and although they speak German (or Pennsylvania Dutch); and although they keep themselves entirely separate from the ‘world,’ or the apostate; have no electricity or phones, and drive horse-drawn buggies on the open road, and the Quakers were founded by George Fox and Margaret Fell during the English Reformation, and spoke English; and although Quakers take it as a directive to change the world through acts of philanthropy and social justice, such as The American Friends Service Committee (which won the Nobel Peace Prize); and although we drive cars and I am typing this on a laptop plugged into a surge protector in an electrical outlet, YES, we are the same as the Amish. We are, essentially, the Amish.

Teehee....