triticale - the wheat / rye guy

Better Than Lolcats

Velo Dogs.

In The Land Of The Blind

The one-eyed is king.

Lolitics

Chaz found an image which fits the two main catagories of recent bloggage. The only suitable response is to cry out...

Mustn't Sleep

Clowns will entertain me.

Found at the relevant specialty blog.

Man Bites Fish

Channel 2 News had cameras at Serb Hall today, getting on the spot coverage of the breaking news that Good Friday produced a good turnout for the fish fry. This ranks right up there in timeliness with "Well, it's really cold and windy here by the War Memorial it being the third week in January" and "Um, it looks like people are really, um, enjoying themselves at the Festival Grounds this Summerfest."

Pubic Education

Rand Simberg has found a report about mankind's early history which contains an assertion he overlooks in his linking. One might allege that I posted on this very topic some time back.

Quote For The Day

That indoor cats live longer, healthier lives did not seem an adequate trade-off to me for robbing an animal of its freedom.

Hunter's Bag Limit

We've long recognized that my son's canine is smarter than a typical dog, but this week he called me with evidence that she is smarter than some people.

Emrack went to the City Market in Kansas City (which he describes as being like Chicago's old Maxwell Street minus the porn and stolen tools) and picked up a bag of meat end scraps from one of the deli vendors as treats for Hunter. He tossed her one piece and she just licked and nibbled at it. He got the bag back out of the fridge, tossed her a second, and put the rest back. When she saw that, altho special, the treat was not a one-time rarity, she ended her careful savoring, and went ahead and wolved the two pieces down.

Cruelty?

Seems to me the animals probably enjoyed it more than the alleged perpetrator.

Centerpiece

I'll be picking the wee wifey up from work at 6:30 Thanksgiving morning, and the feasting will be starting at noon so as to accomodate the foster-niece's work schedule. There won't be time to roast, let alone smoke, a formal bird, so we'll be using a turkey breast for the main course. We'd really like to set a traditional table, so can anyone tell us where to get one of those plastic turkeys?

Update:

One of my readers, a regular read of mine, found something which fits the letter, if not the spirit, of my query.

Perfect Timing

I happened upon this report on the very day my driver (an avid hunter) and I were discussing the very species in question.

H/T OP

Marauding Marsupial

The Speculist has a post in which he mentions the Thylacine. Sounds like the name of a drug, but unlike the bromo-dragonfly it is indeed an animal, and interestingly, one which might not be extinct.

Snakes On A Plane

Well it was only one snake, but it was a very small plane. I bet if you scaled this up it would be exciting enough to make a plot for an action flick.

Doc's Adore

If anyone in the Kansas City area is interested in adopting a puppy, my son has a neighbor whose Labrador Retriever is expecting. The puppies should be as interesting as the conception; the father is a miniature dachshund.

Puppypix

Emrack drove up from Kansas City to get a turkey sandwich (and to deal with possesions he hasn't moved yet) and brought Hunter with. Thanks to recent progress on the move to the you know house, I succesfully took well lit (I hung a much better light in the master bedroom) canine pictures against a solid background (walls are painted and the bed is set up). To conserve your bandwith and further my blogging skills, half-size linked thumbnails are in the extended entry below.

Just Might Be...

I have maintained since we moved up here that it is possible to live in Wisconsin and still be a redneck. My primary argument was that Jeff Foxworthy's classic "If you've ever been too drunk to fish..." applied all too often to those who fish thru holes in the ice. Here's another bit of evidence.

Family Reunion

Emrack and Hunter came up from Chicago for a visit Sunday afternoon. Both enjoyed the chicken I marinated, but the heat was a bit much for the canine. I got a couple of good images of her (other than the tongue-radiator hanging out), posted in the extended entry, but she was usually deep in the shade looking away from the light.

My son will be doing his second comedy club appearance this Wednesday, appearing here just before the start of the Open Mic at 10:00 PM. He figures this will be a tougher test, as the audience will be more nearly sober.

Update:

I forgot to mention that my son is performing under the stage name of "Ross Raskin". Ross is the source of the "R" in Emrack, and Raskin is a family name abandoned by my branch.

Friskies Fatted Calf Dinner

Sebastian, our "who me?" cat, entered our household as an adult, accustomed to spending part of his time outdoors. Altho it wasn't our usual policy, we allowed him to continue this practice. He would stand by the back door crying "Miaout" until someone would open it for him. Sometimes he would whine to be let back in, sometimes he would bang the screen door, and sometimes he would wait till one of us arrived home from somewhere and then run up on the porch.

He would occasionally stay out overnight, but never past eight AM, when the canned food is usually served. Until a week and a half ago. He didn't come to the door, even when called. We tried everything we could think of to try to track him down, short of me luring young girls into my car to help look for him, but to no avail. We kept telling ourselves he had probably fallen in with evil companions and would soon wise up and come home, but after a few days we had to admit we were worried about him.

Late Sunday night I went downstairs in my bathrobe for a final check of the lights and and to see if the tops on the green tomato pickles I'd canned had popped down, and Peteymonster, one of the Kitty cats, was by the back door where I'd never seen him before. I walked over there to see why, and heard a cry from outside which sounded like Sebastian. I opened the door and called him. He answered, but didn't come running. I ran upstairs and grabbed a flashlight, came back down and tried to find him. When the beam crossed the window of the garage, I saw his eyes reflecting back at me. I had to run upstairs again to put on pants and sandals and get my keys to let him out.

There must have been some opening he crawled in thru, since the last time I had the garage door open was a week ago, and plump as he was he still needed a source of water. When he came into the house, he took a quick drink, ate maybe a quarter of the little can of wet food the wee wifey opened for him, and then was more concerned with catching up on petties than on eating. He has yet to go by the back door since he got back, so he must not have had that great a time out there.

Swabbie Lichtenstein

Here is my response to this; similarly not capturing the style of the artist referenced.

Update:

I'm getting Nearstalanched. That's the second order effect of being linked from a post which has been Instalanched. I hope some of you folks are taking a look around, and here's a bit more for you. The posted picture is a modification of one I'd put up earlier, along with some information about the cat.

The picture was modified in Paint Shop Pro 9, not as powerful as Photoshop or the Gimp, but good enough for my purposes. I reduced the color depth, split it into CMYK, and replaced the black layer with one which only traced outlines. Here's another one, in the Impressionist mode. It was done by adding the enamel and brush stroke effects to the previous image.

Veteran Bitches

Glittering Dave took his dog to a breed-specific event a couple of weeks ago at which she was judged to be the best veteran bitch present. They define veteran bitches as female dogs age 7 or more. I would claim that my son's canine is a veteran bitch even tho she is not much over one year old, based on the more conventional definition. She has more combat experience than the average seven year old dog. This is not because she is aggressive or because Emrack encourages her to fight. In the encampments where they are spending much of their time there are other animals who either do not have her acceptance of relative status or who attempt to steal her food. When this happens she instinctively grabs them by the throat, promptly restoring order.

Hunter and Emrack passed thru Milwaukee recently, and I managed to capture some images of her. A couple of them came out well enough to share. This first one came out blurred, and probably would have done so even had I used fast film rather than a digital camera. When she sees me for the first time in a while she gets so excited that her tailwagging shakes her whole body. We call this her buttwaggle dance. The second one however shows that she is capable of being totally laid back, and in fact much of the time she is.

Double Will Bite

When I posted pictures of Penny a while back, I made passing mention of Swabbie, the other cat of that part of my household. The name derives from the fact that he is white and fluffy like a cotton swab. Like many white cats, the Swab is stone deaf. Most of the time he is very relaxed, especially when up above everything and not being bothered. If you touch him when he isn't seeking petties, or try to move him, however, "him's a ninja".

Last summer, Swabbie got out of the house and got into a fight. A scratch to his ear got infected and required medical attention. When Emrack and NP went back to the vet to collect him, the attendant looked at the paperwork and said "Uh uh, I ain't goin' near that animal. You get him yourselves." So they went back to the kennel area and noticed that altho a few of the animal's cages had a yellow "May Bite" warning sticker, Swabbie's had two red "Will Bite" stickers. Since they know how to handle him, they thought this was cool and have proclaimed him to be the Double Will Bite ever since.

Penny As A Kitten

My foster nephew NP was my son's roommate, and is still renting space at the other place now that Emrack is on the road. He has been going thru the stuff he has spread thru the upstairs apartment in preperation for our arrival, and just found some old snapshots of Penny, the older of his two cats. The first one is simply the oddest cat photo I have ever seen. He doesn't look like an actual cat, but like a relief model laid on the floor. I have no idea how they managed to get the effect.

Nowadays Penny is a mature cat who would never be caught in such an undignified sprawl, and has none of the neotenous look which is what we love about kittens. He is still affectionate, stopping by for brief petties whenever I visit upstairs, unlike NP's other cat Swabbie, the notorious double will bite, who has so far managed to avoid being photographed.

R.I.P. Mr Bluebird

Last week I posted a photo of only one of our cats, as I hoped to get better pictures of the other four. I never got a chance to take more pictures of one of them; he passed away on Wednesday.

Creamer was twenty years old, nominally one hundred people-year equivalent. Three years ago he developed a severe bout of anemia. The vet prescribed antibiotics and iron rations, but warned us that if they didn't work we would be looking at an extensive and expensive course of treatments. The simple fix turned things around, but ever since then, he looked old. He was nowt but a skellington covered in fur, but until just a few days ago he was still looking for a chance to leap onto my shoulder, even considering the possibility while I was at camera distance.

His official name was Cream Soda, which continued the tradition of Orange Julius and Orange Crush (better known as Thuuh Crusher). He and his late brother Grey Malkin were known as the Epaulette Twins because as kittens they would ride around on my two shoulders. More recently I took to calling him Mr Bluebird at those times when he was, like the tattoo with a ribbon grasped in his beak which bears my wee wifey's name, on my shoulder.

I should have plenty of time to get good pictures of the other cats here. For next week my foster nephew came up with some neat old snapshots of one of his cats, already residing at the other house.

Who Me?

My stepmother-in-law took in a cat when one of her underlings moved to unpetfriendly quarters. Her own cats were too territorial, and her townhouse to small, for him to fit in, so he wound up here in our household. We would not have been likely to have named him Sebastian, especially now that we have a neighbor with a young son by that name, but he responds to it, so we really shouldn't rename him something such as Poojer.

Altho he recognizes his name, he always has this look of surprise on his face. I got pictures of all five of our cats in this first experimental roll, but only the one with insufficient light came out well enough to post without color correction. I'll stop down a way on the next roll and introduce the rest of the crowd.

Kibabu Peekaboo

Rachel is freaking out over a portrait of a gorilla chomping on a carrot as if it were a cigar. Just wait till she gets a look at what he's really staring at.

Hunterpuppy

It's been a while, but I finally have some new images of our canine, which just happen to be ready for posting on petblogging day. I spent a long time shopping for a digital camera which would do what I wanted, before determining that it made more sense to use 35 millimeter a while longer. So I dug out my thrift store Pentax and had at it.

She's almost a year old now, and about as big as she's going to get. She'll probably add some more muscle to her current fifty pounds She absolutely loves the snow and the cold weather, wanting to run and play as soon as she gets outside. These two show her after she settled down. Once I've got the hang of the f/stops and the viewfinder I'll post some action pictures. The ones I took in this session didn't really come out. I also hope to get some cat pictures, but I expect that I'll be needing strobe for that. Could be as soon as next Friday.

Hunter Update

Emrack was supposed to bring me a digital camera not available locally, but forgot repeatedly. Now he and Hunter are on the road, heading back to California where they first met. No more canine imagery for about a month.

In preparation for the road trip, we took Hunter to the vet and had her spayed. I suspect that this effected the smell of her urine and that she noticed it. Whenever I took her out after we brought her home, she was sniffing very attentively at every tree and fence post along our walk.

O M F G

That stands for Overly Massive Feline Giant. Four separate links there. When I saw the first picture at the first link (hat tip Mog) I thought it was a very small person holding the cat. but the other two images have enough familiar objects to allow scaling. That is a big cat. The last link? Digital scissors and digital rubber cement.

Lawn Gawaited Hunter Images

Taken, of course, out on the lawn. Awaited long enough that I'm not holding to any presumed Friday optimality. This was my second try outside. Even on an overcast day her white and ivory fur overpowers my camera. Additional images will be posted after I get a new one.

Dog Blogging

Anyone who has interacted with a canine as we have been recently will find it interesting to work their way down thru Steve den Beste's latest essay to the part about the interaction between a parent and a pack animal.

Still no more images of Hunter. Weekends persist in being overcast. In the meantime, I assure you that the puppies in the extended entry are not mine.

Canid Camera

Further pictures of our canine are awaiting either the aquisition of a faster-scanning digital camera, or connecting with Emrack this weekend while he is in town and has Hunter out in the sunlight. Here in the house she is usually moving too quickly to capture in a good pose. One picture actually suffers pixelation in lieu of blur.

Yesterday morning I actually wanted to camcord her, as she ran laps in our bedroom. She would jump up on the bed, do a bunny binky, run across and jump of the other side, and then run back around to where she jumped on, skittering on the hardwood floor. Eight times.

Taken Friday

Yesterday was the traditional day in the blogosphere for posting canine images, but it is also the traditional day in Milwaukee for going out to eat fried fish and the traditional day in my household for doing grocery shopping. I managed, by ignoring much barking, to get Hunter to stick around long enough to get a few pictures last night, but it wasn't until this morning that I had time to edit (using Paint Shop Pro 4.0 and not Photoshop) out my thumb and some background noise. So anyway, better views of our canine than previously posted. By the way, she told my wee wifey, in a dream, that Hunter was her name, and has been far more responsive to it than she had been to Polarity.

Anyone curious about Hunter's ancestry, or concerned about Breed Specific Legislation, will find this of interest.

Blog Dogging

By now everyone knows that Rachel Lucas is blogging again. No announcement was really needed; it is documented that people checking her page to see if it was still moribund constituted a non-trivial amount of traffic. The important news is that Digger and Sunny, putatively the cutest dogs in the blogosphere, are back. This leaves me with no choice but to introduce Hunter, the newest member of my household.

Emrack met her in the wilds of Arcata in the course of his recent travels. Altho he had left his regular job for a hippie wanderjahr he is currently working six days a week so she is staying with us for a while which is probably going to extend well past his current employment. He tried to get her to pose on his lap, but my camera's redeye preventer set off the natural nervousness of her breed (Roots Canine) and she would not hold still. You do get to see what a handful she is at an estimated four months old.