My Kind of Art

Dust Art
Originally uploaded by Uncle Mikey.

Dust art, from Scott Wade of San Marcos, TX. It's all amazing, I just picked this one because it features future Texas Governor Kinky Friedman. I'm convinced Friedman will win because Texans are like that.

At UT during the mid-'80s I was one of many who voted for Hank the Hallucination, a cartoon character from Eyebeam, over future liberal nutcase and Clinton adviser Paul Begala for UT Student Council president. Hank won by a landslide but they gave it to Begala on a technicality.

Link from Brian Tiemann's excellent Peeve Farm, where he used a Mona Lisa/Starry Night derivative as a pic, so I was forced to choose between this and one of dogs playing poker. It was a tough choice.

You Have a Point

It's hard to dispute C.G. Heckler's view that this is the headline of the millenium.

Gorgeous

Desert Rose and Fred
Originally uploaded by Uncle Mikey.

Fred's looking at the Desert Rose and wondering, how do I eat that, and what does it taste like? I'm looking at it and wondering, why is it going so nuts with the flowers despite the fact that we haven't fertilized it since last year? My wife says it's because it's in full sun for the first time in its life. I always agree with her, so that must be it.

Nice PR Move There, Doofus

Questionable Choice
Originally uploaded by Uncle Mikey.

So a wine maker walks into an ad agency and says, "We have created a white wine made exclusively with organic products, and we don't have a name for it. Can you guys come up with anything?" One of the ad agency guys jokingly says, "How about Pure White?" And that's how David Duke's favorite hat was born.

Honestly, did they really think this was a good idea?

Now That Looks Like Fun

Some kid in Cambodia has a 20-foot python for a best friend. I would have loved this in college.

Heartbreaking, Pt. 2

Acidman is dead. You may not have encountered him, but he was one of the truly distinct individuals on the great wasteland that is the internet, a brutally candid guy with a lifetime of hard living and regret that he described with great wit and artistry.

William Jordan posted this lovely sermon in the comments, and I may steal it for my own funeral:

Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just round the corner. All is well.

Part of a sermon given by Henry Scott Holland, Canon of St. Paul's Cathedral in 1910

Perfect. See you there, Acidman.

Do You Remember

How great of a basketball player Len Bias was? Most heartbreaking sports story ever.

Hell Yeah

New and most excellent White House Press Secretary Tony Snow Treasury Secretary John Snow lays the smackdown on Bill Keller of the New York Treason Times:

You have defended your decision to compromise this program by asserting that "terror financiers know" our methods for tracking their funds and have already moved to other methods to send money. The fact that your editors believe themselves to be qualified to assess how terrorists are moving money betrays a breathtaking arrogance and a deep misunderstanding of this program and how it works. While terrorists are relying more heavily than before on cumbersome methods to move money, such as cash couriers, we have continued to see them using the formal financial system, which has made this particular program incredibly valuable.

The New York Times is dead to me. If it were a person, I'd punch it in the face.

OOPSDATE: Not Tony Snow, who is indeed awesome, Treasury Secretary John Snow. And I got the link from Ace, who though it was Tony first. My bad for not double checking.

Gene Simmons Junior

Cherry Jubilee
Originally uploaded by Uncle Mikey.

Why does this picture make me think of Kiss? Sabrina absolutely destroys some cherries in her self-feeder, and loves it. What a happy little monster.

Who Knew

Ann Coulter: Deadhead. No, really:

I fondly remember seeing the Dead when I was at Cornell. It was the day of the fabulous Fiji Island party on the driveway “island” of the Phi Gamma Delta House. We'd cover ourselves in purple Crisco and drink purple Kool-Aid mixed with grain alcohol and dance on the front yard. Wait – I think got the order reversed there: We'd drink purple Kool-Aid mixed with grain alcohol and then cover ourselves in purple Crisco – then the dancing. You probably had to be there to grasp how utterly fantastic this was.

She says Deadheads are the real liberals:

Moreover, I really like Deadheads and the whole Dead concert scene: the tailgating, the tie-dye uniforms, the camaraderie – it was like NASCAR for potheads. You always felt like you were with family at a Dead show – a rather odd, psychedelic family that sometimes lived in a VW bus and sold frightening looking “veggie burritos.” But whatever their myriad interests, clothing choices, and interest in illicit drugs, true Deadheads are what liberals claim to be but aren't: unique, free-thinking, open, kind, and interested in different ideas.

She would even have us believe the Dead themselves were not so crunchy liberal:

Either Bobby or Jerry was asked by a Rolling Stone interviewer to denounce all the Young Reaganites attending their concerts in the 80's, and whichever one it was not only refused to attack the young Republicans, but said he liked some of those “rightist” ideas. Consider that when the Dead decided to do something to save the Rain Forest, they didn't harangue poverty-stricken Third Worlders to give up washing machines and electricity. They did it the free market way: buying up parts of the Rain Forest, parcel by parcel.

Link from Cold Fury.

This Will Never Work

I'm trying to post something with a picture on the left side of a blog entry. Is it working?

I love Bibliodyssey, and today there's something neat there: Zoomorphic Calligraphy. Beautiful.

UPDATE: Also cool, the black sun starlings. Fascinating.

Me Three

Noreen doesn't like Thom Yorke of Radiohead, calling him a "tedious, whining, pretentions veal-calf," which has to be my favorite insult of the day. There's more:

That man really is a monumental c*nt. I hated radiohead - the only song with any sort of a tune to it is the one "fake plastic trees" but even that let itself down by having some of the world's most pretentious lyrics. And now Yorke has decided to go solo and has brought out a new album. I can't even bear to look at the cover of the new album case there is a photo of him on it; he has one of those faces that blend victimy- vulnerability with psychotic ire, a look normally seen in people on the turn from abusee to abuser. A face only a psychologist could love.

If only Noreen could get over her shyness.

Family Fun

Lunchtime
Originally uploaded by Uncle Mikey.

Sabrina can't make up her mind about solid foods. One day she loves peaches, the next she can't stand them. She doesn't seem to like sweet potatos at all, and too much rice cereal and banana makes her constipated. Here she's being fed by her cousin Amber while Camille looks on with concern.

Now That's Comedy

I don't watch the Daily Show, haven't since 2004. John Stewart's a funny guy, but when he stopped giving equal ridiculing time to both parties and started campaigning for Kerry, the funny disappeared. Someone said once, "When you stop going for laughs and start going for applause, you're not funny any more." They were right.

Well, it turns out there's something funny about the Daily Show after all.

Fight the Power

My old college buddy and smartypants liberal blogger Rogers Cadenhead has run afoul of the nutlaps at Daily Kos and MyDD, two borderline psychotic liberal sites that have apparently been up to some nasty and possibly criminal stuff. It's no surprise these people are crazy, unprincipled and greedy, but now they're endangering their own politcal party. Glad to hear it.

I Totally Agree

Michael Moore is a little bitch. More good stuff from Pat Dollard.

That's Odd

I thought Islam said you aren't supposed to make images of Mohammed. Then what's this all about?

The Human Camera

Meet Stephen, the human camera. Very cool. From Jeff S. in Dallas.

Retraction

The last three posts have "best ever" in the title. I retract the one about the car, even though it's very cool. It's just not Sabrina cool.

Best Father's Day Ever

Extreme Sabrina
Originally uploaded by Uncle Mikey.

My lovely wife asked me during the week what I wanted to do for Father's Day, and I replied that I wasn't sure I'd have time to visit my parents in San Antonio, but if she really wanted us to go I'd make it work. She stared at me in silence for a minute until I slapped my forehead and said, "Oh, ME."

Deirdre made me a fantastic mushroom risotto from the Dean and Deluca cookbook, and accompanying it were ribeyes and asparagus. And when I wasn't working (which was most of the day) I played with my lovely daughter Sabrina. This picture shows her favorite position (I'm lying on the floor) and I'm proud to say that she rarely vomits despite my best attempts to make her ill with bits of momentary freefall.

D is worried I'll make our little girl a daredevil by tossing her in the air or doing the other things that make Sabrina laugh her little head off, but I maintain that you're that kind of person or you aren't, and nothing can make you that way if it's not already in you. That's my theory, anyway.

I wasn't allowed to have a motorcycle when I was a kid, so as soon as I could afford one and was out of the parents' house, I was rocketing around on a Honda Interceptor 500. The problem lay in the fact that I had no idea how to ride one and had to learn on the bike, which was an extraordinarily bad idea. I narrowly averted death hundreds of times in that first six months, mostly through pure luck, and I can only imagine that riding a kiddie dirt bike would have taught me some valuable lessons when I still had a chance of surviving a crash.

If Sabrina's lucky, we can convince Mommy that it's better to be exposed to such things with her parents. Unfortunately for Mommy, our beautiful little angel most definitely has a taste for violent, adventurous motion, so look out, world: future MX Freestyle Champion Sabrina is comin' at ya.

The Best Thing Ever

Sassy Smile
Originally uploaded by Uncle Mikey.

A friend and I were talking about our daughters, and how their smiles and laughs were the best thing we'd ever experienced. We were both danger-seeking nutcases for decades, and he had a lucrative and adventurous career in skydiving. And if you had asked us in 1987 what the greatest feeling we'd ever have would be, children wouldn't have entered either of our minds.

And yet here we are, knowing full well that your child's loving smile is indeed the strongest stuff made by man or God. No thrill, no achievement, no amount of money can compare. And as my good friend David G. told me over lunch last week (at Hog Island, where I ate yesterday and the day before - it was delightful, thanks), when you've got something as wonderful as Sabrina in your life, all the stresses and difficulties in the world won't dent your happiness and fulfillment. I don't even get mad, or even impatient, in traffic any more, and that in itself is a miracle.

Best Thing Ever Made

The Ariel Atom. A 300 horsepower car that weighs 1100 pounds and accelerates from zero to 60 mph in 2.9 seconds. And it's less than $40,000.

Go look. Hit "Play Video" at the bottom right. God I want one.

Link from the most excellent Neptunus Lex.

God's Gift to Me

Is Hog Island Italian Deli in downtown Austin. I've never had such an amazing restaurant experience in my life as the lunch I had last Thursday with my friend David G., who is a friend of Carlo the owner. Carlo very kindly treated us to some extras after we ordered, and all four of the things that were brought to our table were the best of their kind I had ever had. EVER!

First, the cheesesteak. Carlo and his brother Steve are from Philadelphia, and curiously that didn't encourage me in my hopes for the world's best cheesesteak. I've never had an actual Philly cheesesteak, so for all I know they put peanut butter and maraschino cherries on it, and I heard once that they use Cheez Whiz instead of real cheese in Philly, but my worries were groundless. Hog Island makes the single best cheesesteak I've ever tasted, and as the newspaper writeup they have proudly framed near the register says, to put any kind of sauce on it would have been a crime. I don't know what to say other than it's utterly fantastic and I've been daydreaming about it ever since.

Next we got a lasagna with Italian sausage, which was the best lasagna I've ever had by far. I'm not even a lasagna fan, but this thing was just amazing. After that, the thing I was most looking forward to: the Italian sub. If there's one thing I can eat for every meal, it's an Italian sub made by a real Italian deli. And this one blew every other one I had ever had away. Just perfect in every way.

But the best was yet to come. Carlo kindly gave us 15 minutes to regain some appetite and then he brought the holy grail: the Pastrami Special. Imagine toasted marble rye, brown mustard, cole slaw, and the finest Philadelphia pastrami brisket, chopped and grilled. It was simply the best pastrami I've ever had and I desperately want more of it. All of it. I can't wait to go back Monday.

Anyone who's reading this, for God's sake come to Austin and call me. I'll meet you there.

Amen

Cold Fury responds to Natalie Maines' most recent venomous idiocy:

And there you have it, libs: we question your patriotism because, despite your queasy, half-hearted protestations, you clearly don’t have any. After all, as someone else said not so long ago, so many of you have spent so many years questioning it yourselves. Let one election — well, okay, several — fail to go your way and you’re all ready to flush the whole country down the toilet and condemn the American experiment in toto as a failure.

Well, so sorry if the majority of us think that makes you a bunch of sniveling, contemptible, and yes, unpatriotic sore losers. But that’s the way it is. Cry me a river, cupcake.

Yup.

That Means You, Patsy

Duke alumnus and former Duke lacrosse team member Randall Drain writes an excellent column in the Duke paper that urges a cessation of financial support for Duke University until the president apoligizes:

Richard Brodhead, Larry Moneta, other administrators and certain faculty members have flagrantly and wrongfully hung members of the Duke men's lacrosse team out to dry.

This mistake has not gone unnoticed and will no longer be tolerated by the alumni community. I call on all of Duke University's alumni and donors to end contributions to the University pending a formal apology issued by President Brodhead on behalf of the faculty and administration for failing to appropriately support members of the Duke community.

If Duke University and its current leadership plan to allow TV personalities, sundry activists and District Attorney Mike Nifong run my alma mater, the school is not headed in the right direction, and I declare it unfit for support-financial or otherwise.

My little sister Patsy is a Dukie, and I don't know if she's following this, but if she is I hope she'll send Brodhead a nasty letter. Dukies arise, and man your battle stations!

Link from the wise and powerful LaShawn Barber.