Went to a summer festival this weekend with my friend G. There were were, among the strolling, carefree crowd, lugging these big saddlebags of gear.
G. and I are very different people. She’s a short, beautiful, church-going, civic-minded, family-oriented workaholic professional. I’m a tall, plain*, skeptical, Outlaw layabout who gave up family as a bad job 20-some years ago. She’s a staunch Republican conservative who worries about deteriorating morality and sports a “Hillary for Jail” bumper sticker on her vehicle. I’m an anarchist libertine** who’s v*ting for Sweet Meteor O’ Death.
But we are alike in that both of us, everywhere we go, haul these hefty bags of gear. In a pinch, if we needed to, between the two of us we could feed the multitudes keep ourselves fed and watered for a day, perform minor first aid, cut off a seatbelt, find magnetic north, call for help with a spare device, see in the dark, and have a good chance of preventing a bad situation from turning worse. Thanks to my new compact binoculars, I could even spot a rose-breasted grosbeak if some grosbeak-related emergency arose.
Okay, this is what the new blog template looks like as of today. Better?
The header image, BTW, is a manipulated and arty-fied version of one of the shots I took on the day of the circular rainbows (actually halos, as I eventually learned, along with three or four related — and magnificent — celestial effects).
I won’t be blogging at the new site until probably late August, and at that point I’ll most likely double blog the same content here and there for a while to give readers time to make the transition. Just so you’ll know …
My neighbor Andy built a number of pet coffins. He did this first for a neighbor’s 19-year-old dog. Then he started more to sell on eBay. Then one fine day he had a stroke and was gone like that.
His widow, J., let me choose among the smaller boxes for Robbie’s ashes.
“Smaller” is a matter of perception. One box was a clear standout despite being only partially finished. That box I brought home. But small it’s not.
I filled the nail holes and cracks yesterday and now am contemplating its decoration. Andy would have stained and sealed it. I have something more elaborate in mind. Something along the lines of the Modigliani table (finished table here) or “Doorway to the Sun.”
Soon as I saw it in J’s basement, it reminded me of two things: the miniature stone pagodas in Japanese gardens and a ziggurat.
Stone pagodas not having much color potential, I proclaimed it a ziggurat and am now seeking out sources of ancient funerary art to inspire me. Ziggurats were Mesopotamian. What did Mesopotamian funerary art look like? Does anyone even know? (Yes, apparently they do.) Search engine time is ahead. If all else fails, I’ll end up with quasi-faux-Victorian-parody Egyptian. Never know, starting out, exactly where these projects will carry themselves.
The other thing that struck me about the Ziggurat Urn is that it’s not only large enough to hold Robbie, but also Jasmine. And … ulp, ultimately me. So there it is: the urn for my (hopefully long in the) future ashes, to be mixed with those of my heart dogs.
Is that weird, or what? But what could be better than to spend my immortality, or what passes for it, in a box made for dogs?
Well, dear people, the blog-foundation fundraiser swooped past two milestones yesterday: we passed that halfway point and we made it to the one-year mark.
Thanks to you, Living Freedom blog will move to its own dedicated site. And barring unfortunate incidents with my Lamborghini, it will live for at the very least another year on what you have already donated.
Now, if we can make it all the way to goal, we’ll not only have two assured years of bloglife, but He Who Fakes It Well and I will add interesting new features that take advantage of the very best thing this blog has ever had to offer: you guys.
How law and lawyers killed Europe’s Jews and have done plenty of other murder and tyranny. Which is merely the brilliant lead-in to a condemnation of the current “due process is an inconvenient luxury” anti-gun nonsense.
Jeff Jacoby discovers the biggest armed mob in America. Good question, there toward the end. But we already know the answer. (H/T FH)
It’s no longer some vague right-wing conspiracy that’s responsible for the nation’s distrust of Hillary. Now it’s certain corners of the Internet. Hey. Proud to be one of the many.
But wait. If you shouldn’t pay attention to the Constitution any more (because it’s, you know, so un-modern and so full of DWMs who shouldn’t be telling us what to do), then that means we shouldn’t have a president. Or Congress. Or taxes. Because that’s the main sort of thing the Constitution spells out. So … maybe you’re onto something there, Posner, even though you clearly don’t know it.
Hahahahahaha! The co-founder and CEO of ReMax says it’s a darned pity cash-poor renters don’t know about all those juicy 3%-down loans that are still out there despite all those overly restrictive lenders.
Can pot help prevent Alzheimers? Frustratingly academic at the moment. (C’mon, people, how many grams, ingested how?) But more fascinating data.
Courtesy of Fred in comments. Too adorable not to bring forward: Dr. Seuss Taxidermy. (Not a single one of the critters resembling any from my always-most-favorite Seuss book, On Beyond Zebra!, though.
Thomas Paine wrote those wordsafter the shooting had already begun at Lexington and Concord, after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a fact that always surprises me. We tend to think that by that time, the game was on, lines were irrevocably crossed, and everybody who was going to take a side and get involved was already committed. But not quite so.
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We of course haven’t even had our Lexington moment yet and frankly I pray we never do. Even in the best cases (and the American Revolution was certainly one of those), shooting wars ultimately play into the hands of the most wily statists. Who shoots first, shoots straightest, has the biggest weaponry, or has “God on their side” doesn’t always determine how free people are once the smoke has cleared.
Sigh. It had to happen. One faction in the cannabis legalization movement sics the cops on another faction that it perceives as cutting into its profits. Piggery all around.
Well, yes, that’s almost exactly how it is being a writer. Except they forgot to add smoking three packs a day* and finding clever strategems (like counting the perforations on the acoustic tiles in the ceiling) to avoid actual, you know, work. (H/T jed in comments)
While this article leans anti-Peter Thiel and I’m way more inclined to think the world owes Thiel a debt for his creative thinking and his billionairish backing of it, it’s still a decent look at the man.
This is so cool! Completely fake, mind you. It’s a conceptual art project, not a real thing. But still … so weirdly, imaginatively, creepily cool: The Merrylin Cryptid Museum. (Best viewed by allowing all three scripts, if you happen to be browsing around with NoScript on.)
* No, the smoking and drinking are NOT ME. I have been known to count holes in ceiling tiles, but that was actually in the fifth grade, when I was trapped in class. These days I have more wide-ranging and interesting ways of work avoidance.
Just past the halfway mark of my six months without home Internet. Not too painful so far, right?
Its original purpose of lowering monthly payments to clear last year’s home-improvement debts kind of went kablooey when Dave quit paying for the blog. At that point, I emptied savings to clear nearly all that debt, figuring any unnecessary monthly payments would not be a good idea right now.
Kept a small emergency fund, of course. Always keep a small emergency fund unless you’re living in your car and eating out of Dumpsters.
Barefoot Bandit boy, I’ve always felt kind of fond of you. As criminals go, you’ve got style and brains. You reimbursed your victims and you gave $100 to my favorite vet to help animals. But this is just dumbass stupid. Your mother smoked and drank herself to death on government money. Who, other than you, would want to bring her back to life? (H/T CB)
And it’s the same-old-same-old in the world of U.S. cops, too. So it’s okay to train a dog to potentially “rip the face off” any innocent person — infant, sleeping woman, hapless bystander — as long as it’s for “officer safety”?
Getting away from all that evil … Years ago, webmaster Oliver sent me a the catalog of the Museum of Bad Art. Smiling my way through it the other day, I wondered if the place still existed. Yes! And it’s growing. Here’s a portion of its fabulous collection, each piece worth as much as $6.50. And for those who simply must have these works prominently displayed on their coffee tables, the original catalog has now been supplemented by a collection of their masterworks.
You’ve seen the improvements in my wreck of a house and indeed there’ve been many. I take pride in showing off pictures like this:
What I don’t often show you is how absolutely godawful some of it still looks. In some cases, it’s even worse than when I bought it, largely thanks to said improvements. Really, in some ways a tarpaper shack would be an improvement. I’m not kidding.
I haven’t written much about being ‘Netless (one month, five days, and seven hours as I write this, but who’s counting?) because after the first few days of adjustment, it hasn’t had that much impact.
Sometimes it’s devilishly inconvenient. When I desperately — I assure you, desperately — needed to know all the Hogwarts house colors, heads, and ghosts, I had to wait all the way until the next morning to look them up, oh alas alack.
Other than that and slower correspondence, the impact has been small and mostly positive.
My favorite thing about this ‘Netless interval is having a “moment out of time” several mornings a week.
I’m at the library so I can’t actually listen to this “drones and Beethoven” concert. (Must hunt for a pair of ear buds to avoid offending Marian the Librarian.) But it sure looks impressive!
