A friend at work sent this bumper sticker to me today via another friend who was stopping by my office. At least someone gets it.

The prevailing attitude in this red state is that one candidate wants to help some of the brown people via immigration reform and the other candidate is brown people. Who do we vote for? No one is for the white people.

Last week at work someone told me that Obama's a Muslim and if he's elected, then it's a sign of the apocalypse. I calmly stated that Obama is not a Muslim and left it at that. Meanwhile, I wanted to curl into a fetal position and moan.

This video of adorable Rory only provides more evidence that we could and should have a pony that lives in the house with us. Juannie has been fighting me on this for many years. A fully grown Rottweiler is as big as that precious pony and my cousin had two living with her in their 2-bedroom house. I had three ponies when I was a kid. I love them. Our yard is plenty big enough. So is our house. We could have one bedroom devoted to pony and pups.

I don't like my governor, Bobby Jindal. My nickname for him is Wheatsworth. Why? He's brown but he's still a cracker. Yeah, I wrote it. I stand by it.

His real first name is Piyush but he goes by Bobby because that's certainly less threatening to the Saltine contingent in my home state. (Imagine the chatter on Fox if Barack Obama was still calling himself Barry.) He graduated with honors from Brown University in public policy and biology but defends intelligent design as "the very best science." He signed legislation this week forcing convicted rapists to undergo chemical castration. He's written in a Catholic journal that during college he participated in an exorcism.

We face the prospect of spending the next 4 to 8 years with this paragon of backwards thinking as our governor. The other possibility is that the smarmy panderer joins John McCain on the Republican ticket as the vice presidential candidate. The lesser of two evils? We keep him contained within Louisiana state lines so he's not unleashed on the rest of the country.

Winging It

He wasn't famous. I didn't know his name until today but he was as much a part of my Jazz Fest experience as crawfish bread, Mardi Gras Indians and Congo Square. I just found out that he has died. Juannie called to tell me the sad news that he learned when he read this article by Chris Rose.

Wing was the energetic dancing guy who moved like a whirling dervish up and down the aisles of the Gospel Tent. His free form dance style embodied the joy that is Jazz Fest. I didn't take this picture of him but it's a great representation of the motion and emotion of Wing. Jazz Fest will be less festive without him.

The 100 Best Films Released Between 1983 and 2008

76 viewed in bold.

The 100 Best Books Released Between 1983 and 2008

Bolding What I've Read, Italicizing What I Really Want To Read

27 read so far.

"Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things."

I learned a lot from George Carlin over the years. The most important thing I learned was to question the prevailing "wisdom".


Nice Doggie!



Our Similarities

Once upon a time, there was a serrano pepper plant living in my backyard. It was young, leafy and had two peppers growing upon it with promises of more because of some flowers. One recent Thursday evening, I noticed that much of its leafiness was gone but I was preoccupied with other matters and in a Scarlett O'Hara moment I decided, "I'll think about that tomorrow."

The next morning I ventured out into the yard with the pooches. I walked over to the serrano pepper plant and discovered that now it had not one single leaf. Then I realized that the little green eating machine was still on the plant devouring the remainder of the lone pepper.

See the carnage below.

	Serrano In The Nude
	Munching Caterpillar
	Munchus Interruptus

Any bird that might have eaten this caterpillar certainly got indigestion.

Joe Cocker's performance of "A Little Help From My Friends" at Woodstock. It includes helpful captions and visuals. (Don't know April but I bet she laughed on her birthday.)



Snagged from jmhm

Not a fun outing but I know it's preferable to a colonoscopy.

Do you say pop, soda or coke when referring to a sweet carbonated beverage? Check out the maps charting the geographic preferences for these words.

Everyone around here says coke and the map agrees. But when I was a kid, I always thought it was goofy to ask, "What kind of coke do you want?" And then hear the response, "Dr. Pepper." So I started saying soda to avoid all of that foolishness.

Some recent pictures of the dynamic duo. They are now six years old but age is not slowing down that Corgi energy level.

	Two Cute Patoots
	Bessaroo
	Rockarolla

I have plans with my dad tomorrow but I wouldn't mind hanging out with Barack and his fam. I love pancakes with whipped cream.

Happy Father's Day!

It's been a tough few months. A dear friend of the family died in February. I've written about my Uncle Pete and Aunt Molly before. They lost their house in St. Bernard due to Hurricane Katrina. The stress and disruption certainly took its toll on both of them. Uncle Pete died at the age of 88 on February 19.

I fell into a major funk a few weeks later. His death stirred up a lot of things for me related to the aftermath of the storm. I became listless, disinterested, disheartened. I made an effort to keep it together for work but crawled into the shadows at home. I watched too much TV, did too many crossword puzzles and drank too much.

My lack of interest in socializing was not helped by the fact that I was having problems with inflammation in my left eye due to allergies. Because my eye was so inflamed and I was rubbing my eye while asleep from the incessant itchiness, I gave myself contusions making the white of my eye very red. I looked like a spawn of the devil. It didn't help my mood at all to have the redness recur for several weeks in a row. I finally got the right eye drops relieving the itch and the inflammation.

A good thing over these months is that I've been spending a lot of time with Aunt Molly in an effort to keep her spirits up and to make sure she stays active. She amazes me with her resilience and gumption. She's actually my inspiration to get into a more positive groove.

The cobwebs are officially dusted off. I'm back to taking pictures and I just got asked to join a book group. I'm feeling like myself again.

I have very little free time thanks to watching and rewatching episodes of In Treatment. I love Gabriel Byrne. His expressions and fidgets as he listens to his "patients" are wondrous. And the scenes with him and Dianne Wiest are spellbinding. The Friday episodes are my favorite.

John Adams is the newest addition to my TV lineup. (HBO comes through again.) Paul Giamatti is good but Laura Linney is great. I also like the actor playing Thomas Jefferson. He makes velvet and waistcoats look sexy. I just looked him up on IMDB: Stephen Dillane. He was in The Hours.

I do make time for Hornets games and the occasional crossword puzzle. My guilty pleasure is Big Brother. I must watch because a co-worker's relative is on the show.

What will eroslane have to say about this?

Go Fug Yourself Asks Whose Fug Reigns Supreme? Hillary Duff or Bai Ling. "I don't know whether to feel sorry for Hilary Duff that she drew Bai Ling in the first round, or pleased for her."

"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept." -- Geraldine Ferraro

A post on HuffPo in response to Geraldine Ferraro's comment about Barack Obama.

From the post...

"I'd love a woman for vice president and president. Just not her (Geraldine) and her friend Hillary. And speaking of Hillary...

As of late, I can no longer listen to her voice... If I hear her carry on about her foreign policy experience one more time, I may kill myself. It's like she realized going the George Bush route of saying something totally untrue hundreds of times so we believe it is the way to go.

Doesn't she realize that that is one of major reasons Barack is ahead? That we're sick of that bullshit?

Enough already ladies. I don't want to want to kill myself anymore because I'd love to see a woman I can respect lead this nation."

A comment to the post...

"Senator Obama stripped of his color has nothing to propel him to victory. Obama supporters are asked to look at him as a white man and search their souls, for the absolute truth about their support for him? It is his color, multicultural background and his middle name Hussein that his followers find attractive according to Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro. Take those invaluable and unfair attributes away and they would flock to Senator Hillary Clinton.

I am an Obama supporter. Open minded, college educated, and expensive coffee drinker.

Geraldine Ferraro said and I paraphrase: Obama is only where he is, because he is black. He would not be where he is if he was a woman, or white, and he is lucky for who he is.

I would like to presume it not a racist statement. I think she is completely and utterly wrong. It is amazing for me to see how Clinton supporters are blown away by Senator Obama's persistent wins, no matter how many kitchen Sinks are thrown at him. They cannot understand how he can win, having no experience in a governor's office as a spouse or as a first man in the white house. They really believe that he is winning because of foolish starry eyed 18 year old college kids, who are high jacking caucuses all across the country with strong armed tactics. They actually have bought into their own rhetoric of cultish stupid mesmerized followers.

What was news to me was that Ms Ferraro believes him to be so unqualified a candidate that we, his supporters and followers are blinded by his story and race. The fact that he had an African father, he grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia, and he is black are his only qualifications based on which I or others like me support him. We are so blinded by the above facts that we choose to ignore that he has no other qualifications. According to Ms Ferraro, we have been duped by his color and background. If you take away his color, his background, and his father away and only leave behind a white man or woman with his remaining attributes, he or she would have no chance of winning.

So, my fellow starry eyed, foolish, young, rich, white collar professional cultish followers of Senator Obama here are the questions being raised by Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro.

Take away his color, imagine him to be a white man or woman who grew up in a town called hope in Arkansas, and was raised by his parents and not his grandparents, his name is John Smith and not Barak Hussein Obama, who never travelled outside of the United States, would you still support him?
I want to give Ms Ferraro the benefit of the doubt and hence to the best of my understanding, this question can be answered only by Obama voters. Hillary supporters who are racists, sexist or bigots are out because they are definitely not supportive of him because of his color, gender or name. The ones who would not vote for him because of his name are also out. This is an exercise only for the so called open minded, change supporters, who call themselves beyond race and for his African American supporters. She is calling their support into question.

You are to imagine him to be of the same character, a senator from Illinois, who happens to be honest, holds the same policy positions, puts together the same grass root organization, has the same unparallel ability to inspire and make Americans proud to be who they are. He is young, 46, with appeal across the party lines, will attract independents, and has the potential to change the American landscape, tilting a generation of voters forever liberal and democratic. Ms Geraldine Ferraro asserts that given all these attributes, and stripping him of his color and background family story and he would have bowed out of the race by now, back in Chicago, with his Methodist blonde wife and his lovely daughters. Hillary Clinton would have pocketed the nomination and the democrats would be on their way to the white house.

If only Obama was white or a woman this race would be long over and a deserving woman, with 35 years of experience and solutions would be on her way to make history supported by 100 percent of women and not just 70 percent of over 50, more than half of white men, white and black voters all across America, Midwest, south, West including Hawaii, and Alaska. Senator Obama without the color of his skin and his upbringing stripped has nothing to propel him to victory. He is a pale empty shell."

Pro golfer Tripp Isenhour faces a fine and jail time for killing a red-shouldered hawk by shooting golf balls at it in anger because it was noisy.

The golfer claims he's an animal lover but he made repeated attempts to hit the bird from two different distances. Tripp comes off as a spoiled shithead showing off in front of the film crew working with him that day. While it is good that a member of the crew reported the incident after the fact, why didn't someone step in to stop the bully as he was actually swinging for the bird when it was still alive?

From the article...

According to documents from the investigation, the Orlando golfer was reciting lines when the federally protected red-shouldered hawk started making its "kee-aah" sound from about 300 yards away.

"It wasn't that extreme," said sound engineer Jethro Senger, who reported the incident to authorities a few days later. "Initially, it was causing us to stop rolling a few takes." That's what appeared to set Isenhour off, according to Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission reports.

The golfer, who turned pro in 1990, hopped into a golf cart and drove closer to the feathered creature perched in a tree. For 10 minutes, while the crew waited, Isenhour hit several golf balls toward the bird. He eventually gave up and returned to the set.

The bird then flew closer to the crew and landed in a tall pine tree about 75 yards away. Again, the hawk began to screech.

Isenhour, who earned $471,000 last year and ranked No.152 on the PGA Tour, started hitting drives at the bird, getting closer with each swing, witnesses told investigators.

On Isenhour's 10th swing, the ball hit the bird, causing it to fall more than 30 feet to the ground. Isenhour yelled, "I didn't think I would hit it," according to reports.

When the bird fell from the tree, Senger and others ran to its aid.

"The bird was on his back, bleeding from his nostrils, his mouth was opening and closing slowly, and it was looking up at me as people ran over," Senger told wildlife officials. "I saw its eyes slowly close, and I was pretty sure that the bird had died."

A production assistant later buried the bird off the fairway, said wildlife Officer Brian Baine.

Unable to sleep and haunted by dreams of hurt animals, Senger told wildlife officials what happened. Investigators exhumed the bird, and it is being preserved in Ocala in case it's needed for trial.

I am reading this to keep my mind off of media conspiracies, election machinations and my latest allergy attack. The Mafia, Masons, Mormons, Scientologists, KKK and Opus Dei. Fun for the whole family!

Secret Societies

I am a junkie. I can't stop.

Zogby Poll: Obama overtakes Clinton in Ohio. This is a little more than an hour old.

Turnout and organization observations in Texas.