I'm pictured here collapsing into the arms of my devoted wife after realizing that January is more than half over and I haven't accomplished a damn thing, in spite of having at least appeared to be quite busy.

Let's waste some time

Practice your archery skills with Bowman.

My gift to you this morning.

Yeah, I got something for you, Elmo...

John and Amanda Beth, don't let my niece see this:

Scorpions on a plane!

You know one thing you don't expect to encounter on a flight from Chicago to Vermont?

Scorpions.

An unlucky fellow flying on a United flight from Chicago to Vermont was repeatedly stung by a scorpion:

"The scorpion bit David Sullivan on the back of his right leg, just below the knee, crawled up through his crotch and down his left leg, he thinks, before getting him again in the shin."

It looks like the feisty arachnid stowed away on a flight from Houston, Texas to Chicago.

Thanks to the ever-vigilant Johnny for the tip on this one.

R.I.P. Iwao Takamoto

Iwao Takamoto, the creator of Scooby-Doo and director of the original Charlotte's Web, died at the age of 81 in Los Angeles. Takamoto's death follows a few weeks after that of famed animator and founder of Hanna-Barbera, Joseph Barbera.

Mr. Takamoto learned the art of illustration from fellow internees at the Manzanar internment camp during WWII, and went to work at Disney after the war. He worked as an assistant to Milt Kahl (who animated Pinocchio and Tigger among others) before joining Hanna-Barbera in the early 60's.

This piece by Neely Tucker in the Washington Post hits the right note, I think:

You had to be 8 years old, really, on your third bowl of Cap'n Crunch's Crunch Berries (your parents were still asleep, dreaming on a Saturday morning that you and your brother were already off at college), when the sugar rush was reaching your toenails, when the theme song came on in its complete and utter brilliance:

Scooby Dooby Doo, where are you?

Finally, I could find no evidence (other than having his name attached to the project as "creative producer") that Mr. Takamoto had anything to do with the abomination that was Scrappy Doo.

Clown of the week

Hey, you.

I'm your friend. I'm not like all the others...

Hey, got any bacon?

Do these dogs look hungry? The one in the foreground is Duffy, he's our terrier mutt from the local shelter. That regal and yet somehow deranged-looking girl in the background is Rio. She's a shepherd/husky/rottweiler mutt that we've recently taken in. She and Duffy spend most of their time chewing on each other's necks and chasing each other around the house.

Jack, our rat terrier, is not in this picture. He found a safe place and is in hiding.

I was cooking dinner when I snapped this shot. I had two days off work, and took advantage of the time to make a couple of hearty dinners. Last night was grillades and baked grits. Tonight was smothered round steak with onions, green beans and corn maque choux. The dogs have identified me as a soft touch, and the instant they hear a knife hitting a cutting board they run into the kitchen to see what's up.

Yeah, baby...happy birthday, Elvis. We miss you.

Elvis, we miss you man. All we got left now are short impersonators and their gorilla-suited sidekicks. Lord knows they're trying, Elvis, but no one's TCB.

In Dreams

Dale recently posted about a dream he had, and it got me thinking about my own freak dreams. The most disturbing aspect of Dale's dream, far as I could tell, was a hideous man damaging some DVD packaging. No spiders, no snakes, no unspeakable evil presence bursting through a closed door with a horrible roaring sound that's somewhere between the Exorcist and the Evil Dead.

MizBubs tells me I have far fewer nightmares than I used to. I used to have a pretty wide variety of horrible dreams; fortunately nowadays most of my bad dreams fall into standard cop categories: trying to shoot someone and the gun won't work, chasing someone and can't catch up, etc. From what I"m told I wake pretty violently at times, and I can sit up and move around quite a bit while still asleep, so I've never kept a firearm anywhere within reach of where I sleep.

I still have some bad dreams about f*cking up crime scenes that I'm responsible for, watching evidence get destroyed, but those don't come very often. Another (thank God, infrequent) dream is one where I commit a crime like a bank robbery or a murder and at the moment I'm pulling the trigger or taking the money I am fully aware that I've essentially thrown my life away in that moment.

On the good side, I have some nice dreams about taking road trips and then finding out that I'm really much closer to places I've always wanted to go than I thought I'd be--like, in the dream I'm driving to downstate Illinois to go camping and I suddenly discover that in another 2 or 3 hours I can be in Las Vegas, stuff like that. And at least once or twice a month my dad shows up in my dreams and I get to talk with him, and that's always good. I'd like more visits from my old dogs, though, I wish I could find a way to will that into my dreams.

I'm not even going to talk about sex. No. All I can say is, thank God those are some real good dreams.

Let's listen to some Roy Orbison.

La erotica del robot?

"Now there's more things in Tennessee
Than's dreamed of in your philosophy..."
-Lux Interior


This is what I like about the internet. While absent-mindedly clicking the "next blog>>" button I found a blog titled Fogonazos (which translates loosely as "flashes") and was greeted at the top of the page by a picture of a pert-looking gal from the 1950's hugging a robot. And the title of the post: La erotica del robot. This is precisely the kind of cultural diversity I can get behind, and it makes me wish I'd ever bothered to master another language, or even English. Fortunately, our god-kings at Google have a translation tool, and guess what? "The erotica of the robot" is pretty darn entertaining in badly-translated English:

"Just as the fetichismo of the feet exists or of lencería French, certain type of people we experienced a morbosa sensation before the vision of a robot next to a young woman. One is not about an explicit desire of sex with robots - as in the case of the fetichismo of the robot - but inexplicable a sexual fantasy, produced by the frightful presence of the robot in front of the fragile bodies of the protagonists."

Wow. I always figured that Robby the Robot got a lot of action, but did you know the Daleks have actually appeared in a porno? But wait, I got even more of an education. I clicked on that "fetichismo of the robot" link and found out, courtesy of Wikipedia, that robot fetishism is closely related to statuephilia, also known as agalmatophilia or Pygmalionism: a sexual attraction to statues or dolls...or, bringing it back to an article I posted last week, mannequins.

And I thought I knew all the paraphilias. Whew.

Oops: Army sends recruiting letters to dead soldiers

According to this story in the Army Times, a letter sent to several thousand recently separated officers, encouraging them to return to service, also went to the addresses of 75 officers who've died. 250 injured officers also received the recruiting letters by accident.

The Army is mortified and says it's sorry.

I'm a Counselor Idealist! (INFJ)

"Counselors value their integrity a great deal, but they have intricately woven, mysterious personalities which sometimes puzzle even them. "

Yeah, I confuse the hell out of myself! I am definitely driven by things I only dimly comprehend. Or don't comprehend at all. Well, it keeps Bubs on his toes!

Hey, it's the new year. Test & classify yourself

Aren't you tired of just careening along from year to year, driven by forces (or voices inside your head) that you only, at best, dimly comprehend? I know I am. So this year, I decided to take an honest assessment of my strengths and weaknesses before starting out on my brave new life. I started on the internets, of course. And I found this:

A fun little personality test based on Myers-Briggs.

Just 72 simple yes or no questions, and you're on the road to improved performance through heightened self-awareness.

I discovered that I am an ENFP: Extroverted, Intuitive, Feeling, Perceiving type. The folks here at Kiersey.com describe the type as the "Champion Idealist." I'll be a monkey's uncle if this doesn't sound like me:

"...This strong drive to unveil current events can make them tireless in conversing with others, like fountains that bubble and splash, spilling over their own words to get it all out."

In other words, the ENFP can be a relentless windbag. Mea culpa.

Random New Year

Check out what everyone else is shuffling over at American Idle.

Kiss—Tom Jones

Everybody’s Happy Nowadays—The Buzzcocks

The Young Savages—Martin Denny

Jungle Hop—The Cramps

Bridge Over Troubled Water—Johnny Cash

Man Smart (Woman Smarter)—Harry Belafonte

Close to You—The Carpenters

Drug Train—Social Distortion

Whistling in the Dark—They Might Be Giants

Why Did You Wander—Bill Monroe & His Bluegrass Boys

Parrot's oratory stuns scientists

This story from the BBC tells of a parrot (an African Grey named N'kisi) who has a vocabulary of 950 words. N'kisi is, by all accounts, one talkative and charming parrot.

The parrot pictured at left is Barney. Barney talked a bit, and could be a very entertaining fellow. But Barney had a dark side. His sweet, whimsical moments were often followed by shrieking and biting, and the tang of human blood in the air.

The BBC, to my knowledge, has never done a feature story on Barney.

No happy new year for mannequin fetishist

Ronald A. Dotson, of Detroit, faces a life sentence for smashing the front window of a cleaning supply company and stealing a female mannequin dressed in a French maid uniform. Oooh la la.

Mr. Dotson has at least 6 convictions for similar mannequin-related burglaries. He's being charged as an habitual offender.

I wonder where mannequin fetishists fall in the prison pecking order? More respect than child sex offenders and snitches, sure, but probably less than armed robbers.

What do you want?

Killer sharks descend on Florida coast

Experts say all signs point to a massive attack by man-eating sharks some time in the new year. A school of kill-crazy bull sharks were recently spotted conducting a reconnaissance off the coast of Fort Pierce. The MSM buried this story so as not to interfere with consumer spending over the holidays.

Welcome to 2007. Enjoy the ride

Good morning!

Happy New Year, sleepyheads.