birds and artards
So, ten white Gibson Les Paul electric guitars, four white Thunderbird basses, 70 zebra finches. It’s art. Or, if you’re called something gay like Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, it’s music.
If you’re anywhere near Salem, MA, you can go see it at the Peabody Essex Museum. NPR is all over it, of course. The installation requires a highly controlled environment, an on-call veterinarian and a staff of full-time behind-the-scene poop-wipers. The result sounds like somebody absent-mindedly tuning up before a gig (the guitars are clearly open-tuned to a chord). It has all the soothing, pleasant mindlessness of several wind chimes in a light breeze.
Reddit has a subforum called /r/mildlyinteresting where an awful lot of official state-sanctioned art seems to belong these days.
January 22, 2014 — 11:29 pm
Comments: 15
kittehsaurus
If it looks like we got double fangage going on up there, it’s because we do. That big one is shoving aside the little one in front (or the other way around; I’m not sure). Kitteh is teething.
At around four months of age, the permanent incisors will start to come through and when the kitten is around 6 months of age the adult canines will come through. From eight months on, the premolars and molars will start to emerge.
What’s that you say? Several more months of this grumpy thumb-chewing fangasaurus?
January 21, 2014 — 11:38 pm
Comments: 16
Happy MILK day!
Oh, man, I love a glass of sweet, cold whole milk. It’s those milk-drinking Viking genes.
This is one of my happiest indulgences. All of the major supermarkets carry a premium brand of Jersey or Guernsey whole milk. Channel Island milk, as I’m sure you know, has more of everything that makes milk awesome. It’s golden yellow with butterfat!
Butterfat. God, that word.
It’s the breed of cow, so they say, rather than the conditions that makes Jersey or Guernsey milk, but I like the idea mine comes from little storm-lashed islands off the coast.
When I was a lass, our family cow was a Jersey, and she gave fine, sweet milk. We usually let her go dry after her calves weaned, but when we did milk her, it was awkward to talk about it:
her name was Mother.
— 12:36 am
Comments: 20
Or maybe not
Still working my way slowly through Norman Rockwell’s autobiography (it’s an actual paper book; I’ve kind of forgotten how to use those). Early in his career, nearly all his commissions were for kids’ magazine. He describes how he would hang around elementary schools for hours checking out children, then approach the ones he favored and asked them back to his studio.
I thought what a quaint and innocent time, until I got here:
Four ground-glass windows faced the hallway leading to the other offices. When Billy and Eddie saw the shadow of a passing person on the glass, they’d shuffle their feet and scream, “Oh, Mr Rockwell, don’t. Please. Oh, Mr Rockwell, we didn’t know you were that kind of man.” And I could see the person stop and turn his head to listen. Then Billy and Eddie would fall silent and the person would put his head close to the window so he could hear better. But Billy and Eddie always ruined their own game at this point by breaking into shouts of laughter.
Billy was Billy Paine, Rockwell’s favorite model. The illustration above was Rockwell’s very first Saturday Evening Post cover, and Paine was the model for all three boys. Here’s Billy’s sad end:
When he was thirteen Billy was climbing out of a window in the second story of Edgewood Hall with a girdle he’d stolen from a lady’s room, and lost his footing, falling to the sidewalk below. A few days later, he died
A more innocent time, my ass.
Right. Back here tomorrow, 6 sharp WBT. Dead Pool Round 58!
January 16, 2014 — 11:21 pm
Comments: 14
You may see a stranger…!
Did I ever tell you about the time I came in filthy from the garden, and Uncle B called me a “scum-encrusted weasel” and we both instantly began singing it to the tune of “Some Enchanted Evening”?
See, this is why we belong together.
Thanks to JuliaM and Drew458, who both thoughtfully gave me linkage to this adorable singing stoat.
Ha! Ha! Just kidding! It’s not singing, it’s having a massive cerebral hemorrhage!
January 15, 2014 — 11:35 pm
Comments: 21
Nooooo…not Mrs. Grissom!
I found this cruising my hometown (Nashville) paper — notable deaths 2013 — Grace Grissom, co-founder of Mrs. Grissom’s Salads, died in May, age 94.
I had no idea this was a local product. I had no idea Mrs Grissom was a real person. Mrs Grissom’s chicken salad was a total staple of my childhood. I have not had anything that came close to it outside Tennessee.
Not sure how to describe it. It was like chicken meat pâté, but looser. More like liquid chicken. Chicken paste. Chicken shakes. Okay, maybe not that loose, but it tended to squish out the sides when you took a bite, and a tub of it was less than a buck, so there can’t have been much chicken in it.
Still back in old Nashville, my friend’s granddad made an awesome chicken salad. It had much more chicken in it, but it was still all ground up into a stiff paste (with mayo and celery, I think the recipe went). Stiffer than Mrs Grissom’s, but the same idea.
Then I moved to New England, where chicken salad was diced chunks of chicken with various food lubricants. And then I moved to old England, where a sandwich salad doesn’t mean the same thing at all. Chicken salad and tuna salad are, respectively, chicken or tuna with a salad (i.e. with lettuce on it). On the other hand, they sell a variety of tinned meat pastes which is much more like what I’m talking.
Anyway — lay it on me. What’s your regional notion of chicken salad?
— 12:04 am
Comments: 32
Did somebody say s’mores?
Chris Christie as the StayPuft marshmallow man. Because he’s fat. How long have I been a sooper genius? Oh, all my life, I guess.
I’m not very passionate about Christie either way. He can be funny and personable (should that be and/or personable?) when he wants. He an also be a tiresome, typical Northeast squish RINO. Whatever. I don’t want to talk about that. I want to talk about yet another article scolding wingers for being unyielding ideologues (it’s the Jay Nordlinger NRO piece, to save you the click-through).
Lately, I have been more and more impatient with 100-percenters — people who have to agree with someone 100 percent in order to consider him any good. There is very little room for 100-percentism in politics. In other spheres of life, maybe, but not this one.
Occasionally, I will quote someone favorably in my column. And someone will e-mail me, “Yeah, but do you recall what he said on September 8, 1999? Traitor!” That word could refer to me or the fellow I had originally quoted.
Sometimes it seems that no one is ever good enough for us: not 41, not Dole, not 43, not anybody.
That’s grossly unfair, that 100-percenter tag. There are limitless areas where righties can disagree and still call themselves righties. But there is a short list of topics that are core beliefs. In any cohesive ideological group, if you dissent from a core belief, you ain’t one of the flock. For that short list of topics…yeah, you have to buy into those 100%. Damn right. Hooty-hoo.
What irritates me even more, though, is the way these guys act like it’s somehow flighty or immature of the base to fall in love with a candidate when he’s talking a good game, but turn on him when he does something grossly unconservative.
Really? Seriously? That’s like saying, “you meet a guy, you fall in love, you take him home to meet the family, and the moment he drops trou and shits on the carpet you act like he’s the antichrist.” Um, duh?
Say, exit question: isn’t it too early to torpedo Christie? Don’t they usually wait until we’re stuck with a bad nominee and tapped out financially before they pull the rug out from under us?
January 13, 2014 — 10:33 pm
Comments: 15
Yep, still phoning it in
I went to lunch with the neighbors today (Uncle B couldn’t come; he had too much work) and those wiley old coots drank me under the table. Why am I always the youngest person in my cohort?
Man, those old wrinklies can put it away!
Anyway, my hostess’ sheep were just back from the Winter pasture, so here’s a painting of a ewe I did a long time ago. I don’t know if they always moved sheep around all year (you’d have to think in the days before truck transport it would be a real chore), but they all do it here.
Good weekend, everyone!
January 11, 2014 — 12:00 am
Comments: 9
Breakfast with Mrs Slocombe
Really, England? Really?
It’s an energy drink. I plucked it off the bargain shelf after the holidays. The girl at the register said, after the novelty wore off, even the kids weren’t really interested.
And what makes up its magical blend? Fresh white grape juice from Southern Italy, pressed Mexican limes and lightly carbonated water. These are then mixed with Grenadilla and Lychee infused with six selected botanical herbs: Siberian Ginseng, Guarana, Sasparilla, Schizandra and Milk Thistle all of which have their own unique properties and benefits – and taste amazing when blended together and served ice cold on a hot night out.
Hang on, I love grenadilla and lychee. Let me crack open this sucka.
Hey, I like it.
Don’t tell my mom.
January 10, 2014 — 12:08 am
Comments: 5
This guy
Ran across this looking for something else.
January 8, 2014 — 11:55 pm
Comments: 10