And Madeleine eeeeepy goodness

What's that Ripley doing now?

Pink tongue.

Whaaaaaa?

She looks so grown up. Now if I could just get her to quit leaping on me.

Friday Ripley Blogging

First we bite stuff.

Then we have nap time with our toys.

Then we go play on the sofa, diving into the cushions.

Memorial Mr. Plushy Friday Blogging

I miss my boy.

A 2 cent rant

I feel I have to weigh in on the capitulation of the democratic leadership to Bush's demands to eternal funding of his war without any oversight or accountability.

It was the wrong thing to do. Wrong on just about every level. Why can't just one elected official in this country do the right thing without weighing the political consequences? Our leadership is wrong on this issue- the country hates this war, hates Bush, and hates the republican party and anyone else who has cheerled for this fiasco. But worse, they let worry about perception and positioning guide their decision making on an issue that involves the life and death for thousands of American troops and Iraqi citizens. That's just unconscionable.

I often complain that the Bush administration puts politics before the good of the nation in every decision they make. But are we any better? Politics is supposed to be a tool to allow you to accomplish the real work. To put the policies and programs into place that will hopefully improve this nation and the world. Politics isn't the spaghetti, it's the pot you cook it in, or maybe the wooden spoon you use to stir the sauce. In America, all we do is fight over the pot.

No wonder that morally, we're all fucking starving to death.

Shakespeare said, "First, kill all the lawyers." I say, "First, let's shoot all the political consultants into the sun. They are fucking wrong about everything, and they are hurting America."

Oh, and on a side note- I wish I could force our leadership to take a look at some photos like these:

AP/Karim Kadim

AP/Hadi Mizban

Bush said today, again, that it was better to fight them there than to fight them here. Well, Speaker Pelosi, Senator Reid, Rep. Emmanuel.... take a good look at the consequences of pursuing that morally bankrupt strategy. We invited the worst of the worst into someone else's country. You have the means to stop it, and yet you will not.

That makes you just as culpable as little chickenhawk georgie. A pox on all of you.

"I'm all fine here....

.... how are you??" **

Really, she seems none the worse for wear. She just continues on her merry way, being impossibly eeeepy. Hopefully I won't go home to find that her ear has fallen off or something equally dreadful.

**The geeks among you will recognize the dialog from Star Wars.
"Ummm, nevermind. Luke, we're gonna have company!!"

Daily Kitten palooza

"I got kicked in the haid last night by accident."

"I don't know what all the fuss is about, she seems fine to me. Now, bring that feather on a stick a little closer..."

Her haid injury didn't stop her from jumping on her sister.

Ripley milked her "injury" for all it was worth last night, repeatedly asking to be picked up and cuddled.

Random film stars

This photo has been sitting on my desk since SXSW. I was shooting the premier of a film when this dude wandered by. It's Paul Rudd, who the tabloids (that I saw at the grocery store) assure me is THE star of the summer. I do not know what that means.

BTW, he's short.

(For those of you who don't recognize him, he was Alicia Silverstone's boyfriend in Clueless and Phoebe's boyfriend in Friends.)

Random dog blogging

A chihuhua I saw on campus last month. It was a boy, so I suppose he was teh gay.

Daily Kittens

Busy day for me today, more posting later.

Oh my!!

Ping pong sea sponge.

Fanfin seadevil.

Eli draws out attention to a delightful new book, The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Deep, reviewed in the NYTimes today, here::

When, more than 70 years ago, William Beebe became the first scientist to descend into the abyss, he described a world of twinkling lights, silvery eels, throbbing jellyfish, living strings as “lovely as the finest lace” and lanky monsters with needlelike teeth.

“It was stranger than any imagination could have conceived,” he wrote in “Half Mile Down” (Harcourt Brace, 1934). “I would focus on some one creature and just as its outlines began to be distinct on my retina, some brilliant, animated comet or constellation would rush across the small arc of my submarine heaven and every sense would be distracted, and my eyes would involuntarily shift to this new wonder.”

Beebe sketched some of the creatures, because no camera of the day was able to withstand the rigors of the deep and record the nuances of this cornucopia of astonishments.

snip

Today, the revolution in lights, cameras, electronics and digital photography is revealing a world that is even stranger than the one that Beebe struggled to describe.

The images arrayed here come from “The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss” (University of Chicago Press, 2007), by Claire Nouvian, a French journalist and film director. In its preface, Ms. Nouvian writes of an epiphany that began her undersea journey.

“It was as though a veil had been lifted,” she says, “revealing unexpected points of view, vaster and more promising.”

The photos above are from the book. Click through to the slideshow for many more deepsea beasties.

Like Eli, this is a book I have to have.

Daily Ripley

She's such a funny little thing.

Late Night Maddie

Such a pretty girl she's grown up to be.

The Reflection Nebula

The Relection Nebula, NGC1333

The dust is so thick in the center of NGC 1333 that you can hardly see the stars forming. Conversely, the very dust clouds that hide the stars also reflects their optical light, giving NGC 1333's predominantly blue glow the general designation of a reflection nebula. A highly detailed image of the nebula, shown above, was taken recently by the Mayall 4-meter telescope on Kitt Peak in Arizona, USA and released to honor astronomer Stephen Strom on his retirement. Visible near the image top are vast blue regions of dust predominantly reflecting the light from bright massive stars. Visible in the thick central dust are not only newly formed stars but red jets and red-glowing gas energized by the light and winds from recently formed young stars. The NGC 1333 nebula contains hundreds of newly formed stars that are less than one million years old. Reflection nebula NGC 1333 lies about 1,000 light years away toward the constellation of Perseus.

Hat tip to Plum P.

Petra!!

A place I would really like to see. Hopefully before madmen blow up the middle east. I don't really think the grail knight is there, but it's fun to imagine it, eh?

photo: Marwan Naamani, Agence France-Presse

Ripley....

In the meantime, Ripley is still a little squirt.

Teen Age Madeleine

Where does the time go? Maddie looks all growed up all of a sudden.

Seems like it was just yesterday she looked like this:

Sisterly Love

You may say, "Awwwwwwwww" now. And I suggest you step away from any furniture with sharp corners for when the eeeeeepiness overtakes you. (I'm looking at you, watertiger.)