Dyspeptic Pumpkin

Party, but not too hearty!

Trick Or Doggie Treat!

Happy Halloween!

More Carving Phenoms

More proof that cats are smarter than dogs.

Phenom Carver

Whitey, polar bear and pumpkin carving enthusiast, invites you to try your hand at carving your own Halloween pumpkin
HERE.

Black Cat Blog Friday

No, not Sammy Davis Jr., ...in today's P.C. environment, he would be an African-American cat...

For the Halloween season, only a black cat will do for cat blog Friday.

The BLOG Worth

My blog is worth $2,258.16.
How much is your blog worth?

I don't know how they arrive at this figure, but there it is... $2,258.16

Not bad for an insignificant microbe in the Blogosphere Ecosystem... or is it?

Beta Pose Pup

Tropical Storm Beta, the 23rd Atlantic storm this season, forms over the south western Caribbean Sea. Although this storm is not expected to come towards the U.S., now would be a good time, if they haven't done so already, for anyone living anywhere along the Gulf Coast to prepare for the rest of the hurricane season. Everyone should have, at the very least, enough water and food for 3 days!

Don't turn into one of those fools who didn't prepare, even though they had plenty of time to do so, and who are now whining that the FEMA response wasn't fast enough or good enough for them. These are the very people who are filling up on free stuff from FEMA when it's been a scant few days since Hurricane Wilma's passing.

There is no substitute for self-reliance.

We know. We've been there.

No HO HO HO

Long before vegetarians and vegans became so plentiful that you can't swing a dead cat over your head without striking one, children were admonished to eat their vegetables by the Jolly Green Giant.

Sadly, the voice of the Jolly Green Giant, Elmer "Len" Dressler Jr., died recently at the age of 80. And another piece of the past is silenced forever.

Secretary Gou'ald?

In the ever-expanding media bias file:



Is Condi Rice a Gou'ald host or does she need the services of an exorcist?

Neither, the folks at USA Today just decided to photoshop her eyes. Here's the original, non-demonic photo:



When asked why why USA Today didn't go all out and add lime-yellow laser beams shooting out of Condi's eyeballs, Richard Curtis, Graphics & Photos Managing Editor said that they were saving those for Bush.

UPDATE on this post from the Editor of USA Today: The photo of Condoleezza Rice that originally accompanied this story was altered in a manner that did not meet USA TODAY's editorial standards. The photo has been replaced by a properly adjusted copy. Photos published online are routinely cropped for size and adjusted for brightness and sharpness to optimize their appearance. In this case, after sharpening the photo for clarity, the editor brightened a portion of Rice's face, giving her eyes an unnatural appearance. This resulted in a distortion of the original not in keeping with our editorial standards.

Yeah, right... editorial standards.


[The BLOG note: Hat tip to Michelle Malkin for photo credit]

CAUTION

We survived Hurricane Wilma. Thank the Lord, all we got at The BLOG headquarters was some rain and a blustery weekend. Our prayers go out to those who were not as fortunate.

Lately, it seems as though we've gotten more than our share of misery...

...hurricanes, sinkholes, flooding, runaway hungry pythons...

FLORIDA... it's not for the timid.

My Inner Robot

Find your inner robot here

Airport Money Bags

A Transportation Security Administration screener at John F. Kennedy International Airport was charged Thursday with stealing $80,000 in cash from a checked suitcase headed for Pakistan.

The screener, Frank Ulerio, Jr., 23, allegedly stole the money when he was inspecting the checked luggage of a 45-year-old passenger from Astoria, Queens who was flying to Pakistan.

Ulerio, a Queens resident, faces charges of grand larceny and criminal possession of stolen property. If convicted, he faces up to 15 years in prison.

The owner of the money did not declare the cash but airport officials said he was never asked if he had anything to declare and likely will not be charged with a crime.

This is unbelievable. Since when did the policy for declaring become don't ask, don't tell?

In this day and age, a suitcase with undeclared $80,000 heading to Pakistan doesn't raise any red flags to anyone at Homeland Security?

At the very least, doesn't this merit an investigation?

Cat Blog Friday

Florida cat watching the Weather Channel.

Yikes! Why couldn't I live in Sheboygan?

Computer Model Mania

Like everyone in Florida, I'm watching the news and the Weather Channel non-stop, and I'm seeing the wide array of Hurricane Wilma computer models, which, at this point, are little more than fortune-telling. The above is just one group. There are many more.

I know if you live in any-state-but-Florida the predicted paths look pretty close together, but where I'm standing, it's pure frustration. They're all over the state. How is a person supposed to make intelligent decisions when dealing with such an unpredictable storm?

Keep those prayers coming, folks.

Bookolepsy

Out of Chubbuck, Idaho comes news of a dog having been diagnosed with narcolepsy. The condition is caused by a disconnect between the normal sleep-wake cycle, and is triggered by excitement that causes the afflicted to go from being awake straight into a deep sleep.

What should be some of a dog's greatest joys in life have become Skeeter's worst nightmare. Food, a chance at chasing a squirrel, going for a walk, or even an opportunity to sniff another dog all have the same effect on the 11-pound toy poodle: he's out cold.

I have a variant of narcolepsy, called bookolepsy, and it is triggered when I attempt to read in bed. No sooner do I start to read, that my eyelids get heavy, and I'm out like a light.

Bookhenge?

No, not another monument to Druidic worship, but a display at the world's largest book fair, the 57th Frankfurt Book Fair. People can stroll through the Brockhaus encyclopedia exhibit. Each book is 11-feet high!

Beware of the domino effect, little people.

Wilmaaaaaaa!

Hurricane Wilma was a Category 2 last night when I went to bed. This morning I was shocked to find Wilma had grown into a Category 5 monster, with winds of 175 mph, and an unbelievable pressure of 882 mb...the lowest pressure of any Atlantic basin storm. Meteorologists are predicting that Hurricane Wilma will make a right turn after the Yucatan Peninsula and head for Florida.

Now would be a good time for all you nice folks out there to pray for us Floridians.

Kitty Litter Cake

YUUUMMMMM! Just in time for Halloween comes this Kitty Litter Cake recipe from the fun-loving folks at FabulousFoods.com.

Now I don't know about you, but I can't imagine wanting to eat anything that looks like a litter box. That's just me. Of course, I have 4 cats and the last thing I want to see is a full litter box, not to mention the thought of having to clean out another one of the filthy things.

That's why I finally relented. I ran out this weekend and bought a Litter Maid Plus Self-Cleaning Kitty Litter Box.

Now the whole family is focused on the cats' bowel habits...not just me.

Tootsie Roll, anyone?

American Wookie

In a court room far, far away, in Arlington, Texas, Chewbacca the Wookie became an American citizen.

Peter Mayhew, the actor who played Chewbacca in the "Star Wars" movies took his citizenship oath yesterday, 6 years after marrying an American woman from Texas.

Welcome to America, Chewie.

Ancient Noodles

No, not a plate of writhing Klingon bloodworms, but the earliest empirical evidence that noodles originated in China around 4,000 years ago.

Houyuan Lu, of the Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing and his colleagues found the ancient noodles preserved in an overturned, sealed bowl at an archaeological site near the Yellow River in northwestern China.

This discovery disproves other suggestions that noodles were first made in the Middle East and introduced to Italy by the Arabs during the Middle Ages.

Remember, if someone ever asks you the origin of anything, the most likely answer is China. The Chinese have an ancient culture with a remarkable history of wisdom and discovery, which makes their adoption of a bankrupt system of government such as Communism all the more incongruous.

Didn't Confucious say something about squandering your wisdom?

Two Tongued Cat Blog Friday

This kitty out of Dobson, N.C., is believed to be the only cat in the world with two tongues. The cat, named Five Toes, was born with two tongues and five toes on each paw.

Owner Bill Whittington said Ripley's Believe It Or Not will feature Five Toes in its 2006 guide.

I don't think Five Toes is the first name that would occur to me if I discovered my cat had two tongues. Lickity, Scratchy... Freaky!

AFLAC!

Scientists go off the deep end and attack the AFLAC duck. Authorities believe the men were tired of the glut of AFLAC commercials on TV.

Raving Neo-Sov

Former vice president Al Gore said yesterday he has no intention of running for president again [whew!] but he said the United States would be "a different country" if he had won the 2000 election, launching into a scathing attack of the Bush administration.

Here are a few of Gore's statements while at an economic forum in Stockholm, Sweden:

"We would not have invaded a country that didn't attack us," he said, referring to Iraq & Afghanistan. [We'd still be wringing our hands about 9/11, like we did about the USS Cole and the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center]

"We would not have taken money from the working families and given it to the most wealthy families." [This chestnut never dies. Just look up the stats on who pays the most tax]

"We would not be trying to control and intimidate the news media." [Hello? When did the insistence that documents and articles be genuine and not fabrications become intimidation and control?]

"We would not be routinely torturing people." [My personal favorite. How can this nonsense be considered even remotely rational?]

I've always been bothered by Al Gore's frequent misrepresentations of reality, but I particularly dislike his flights of fancy when they occur on foreign soil.

I used to think he was just another America-bashing neo-sov, but now I know he's a raving lunatic neo-sov.

Thank goodness we are the country that we are today. No thanks to you, Al.


[The BLOG note: photo credit to Junkyard Blog . Huge hat tip to jeff/slash for being the first to coin the term, neo-sov {the direct opposite of neo-con}. Maybe he'll expound on its genesis on his blog Queequeg's View

Mommy Dearest Redux

Pop icon and marketing mastermind, Madonna, having undergone yet another transformation, reveals her parenting secrets in an article from This is London .

Madonna, married to film director Guy Ritchie, says she has banned television and punishes her daughter's messiness by confiscating her clothes.

"I'm a disciplinarian. Guy's the spoiler," she says in an interview with Harpers & Queen magazine. "TV is trash. I was raised without it. We don't have magazines or newspapers in the house either."

After inflicting her nasty, bacteria-ridden petrie-dish-on-legs self on us for years, she has the nerve to talk like this?

I was raised watching TV, I grew up reading newspapers and magazines, and my mother wasn't moronically dictatorial. I guess I'm no Madonna. Amen to that.

Belated Blogiversary

I have a terrific memory for most things, but I'm not good at remembering dates. It's so bad that I forgot to note The BLOG's first anniversary on 10-04-05.

Believe me, if it were anatomically possible, I would kick myself.

The Great Pumpkin

Nothing personifies autumn for me as much as pumpkins. This giant prize-winning pumpkin, weighs in at a record 1,229 pounds, and measures 3 feet, 9 inches high. Strangely enough, Joel Holland, the grower of this great pumpkin, has won the Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh Off competition 5 years in a row. He won last year with a pumpkin that weighed exactly the same amount. Weird stuff.

Alas, an even larger pumpkin took top honors at the 12th annual Rhode Island Southern New England Giant Pumpkin Growers Championship with a giant pumpkin weighing in at 1,443 pounds, just under the world record of a 1,446 pounds out of Ontario, Canada.

Fall is in the air...even if in Florida, it still feels like summer.

Avian Flu

In Turkey, experts have said that samples from infected animals tested positive for the H5 virus, but it is not yet known whether it is the H5N1 strain, seen as particularly dangerous.

The H5N1 virus has mainly been found in 10 southeast Asian countries and has so far infected 112 people, of whom more than 60 have died, according to the World Health Organization.

Scientists have warned that millions of people around the world could die if the virus crosses with human flu strains to become a lethal and highly contagious new disease.

Let's hope the H5N1 virus doesn't mutate into a human vector.

Non News

From AP Washington comes this article divulging that Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers once owned a Smith & Wesson .45-caliber revolver... AND IS NOT LICENSED TO CARRY A CONCEALED HANDGUN IN TEXAS...

[cue the melodramatic violin music, and begin the hand wringing from the press]

And if that wasn't bad enough, the article continues, "state officials refused Monday to reveal whether she has ever been licensed...

[cue the melodramatic organ music next].

So what?

It is not a crime to own a handgun in Texas. A person in Texas can own a gun without a concealed handgun license. In Texas, it is not a crime to carry a rifle in plain sight, but a concealed carry permit is a separate right, requiring training and certification. Texas is one of 43 states that allow concealed weapons, and only about 230,000 residents are registered under the law, but I'd be willing to bet that in some places, there isn't a home that doesn't have firearms of some kind.

This is such non news.

What's next? Miers is exposed as being one of those foul folks who drinks orange juice directly from the carton?

Oh the humanity!

Python Food Cat

Just when you thought it was safe to come to Florida, comes this story out of Miami Gardens. Frances, a one-year-old Siamese cat pictured here as the huge bulge in the 12-foot Burmese python, was gobbled up while she frolicked in her back yard.

Elidia Rodriguez got the cat last year as a post-hurricane gift. She named the cat Frances, after the storm. Now, poor Frances, is Burmese python food.

The snake was captured and taken to the Sense of Wonder Nature Center at AD Barnes National Park.

Earlier this month, authorities say a 13-foot python burst after it apparently tried to swallow a live, six-foot alligator whole. In case you missed it, that encounter was a draw..



I thought Florida cats were armed for bear...and pythons.

Ugliest Vegetable Contest

No, not another post about millionaire "documentary" filmmaker, Michael Moore... but an actual contest by the Britain's National Trust to search for the country's ugliest vegetable in Britain. Gardeners were encouraged to submit anything "from two legged carrots to corkscrew runner beans, which often taste great but are rejected because of their looks."

The Trust, which looks after many of Britain's historic gardens, said it hoped the campaign would counter a trend among retailers for stocking perfect-looking fruit and vegetables, regardless of its taste.

I don't happen to have an ugly vegetable at the moment, this hideously deformed freakish carrot thing isn't mine, but I do have an entry for the confused fruit category:



This is an orange who wanted to be an egg.

Silly Cat Tricks

For Cat Blog Friday: We are teaching the new kittens how to cope with life in our loud and busy household. At first, all they did was scamper off and hide for hours. With every passing day, they are interracting with us more and more. For kittens, it's all about the play.

Dragonfly Diet

The average dragonfly can eat its own weight in 30 minutes. Just like millionaire "documentary" filmmaker, Michael Moore.

Sorry, but I can't resist gratuitous fat humor at Michael Moore's expense.

Presidential Advice

[The BLOG note: Hat tip to Dak-Ind of The State of Indiana for the link]

Don't Misunderestimate Harriet

From American Thinker comes an excellent article about Harriet Miers, President Bush's most recent appointee to the Supreme Court.

I hope unhappy conservatives read this article and take it to heart. This woman has a competent legal mind, has bushels of common sense, has managed a large business and run it well. President Bush has also known Harriet Miers for decades and he has worked closely with her for five years.

Harriet Miers is a strict constuctionist of the Constitution and she is confirmable, as opposed to others who can and will be 'borked' because the weak-kneed Senate republicans won't vote for an ultra-conservative judge in the numbers required to confirm.

The real battle will be for the third vacancy and President Bush is thinking about that with this nomination.

I hope the unhappy conservatives don't make the mistake of misunderestimating Harriet Miers.

I would also hope the unhappy conservatives don't make the mistake of misunderestimating President Bush.

New Additions To The Family

Two gray short-haired tabbies arrived yesterday via my eldest daughter's math teacher, who found the 10-week old kittens in a box. Their names, Psyche and Pepper, are still tentative... I'm pushing for Spot and Puma, but the final decision is up to my daughters.

Annular Eclipse

The moon passes between the earth and the sun to cause an annular solar eclipse as seen from central Spain October 3, 2005. An annular eclipse differs from a total eclipse in that the moon appears too small to completely cover the sun. As a result, the moon is surrounded by an intensely brilliant ring or annulus formed by the outer perimeter of the sun's disk.

The last annular eclipse visible from Spain took place on the 1st of April 1764 and the next one will occur on the 26th of January 2028. [REUTERS/Victor Fraile]

Go Bulls!

The USF football team (3-1, 1-0 BIG EAST) travels this week to the Orange Bowl to face No. 9/10 Miami (Fla.) in the Orange Bowl ... The Bulls look to extend their three-game winning streak to four games this weekend against the Hurricanes ... The Bulls, who are just in their ninth season, and this game with the Hurricanes, marks the first matchup between USF and one of the three schools in the State of Florida to have won a National Championship (Miami, Florida, and Florida State) ... It is also the second straight game against a top 10 opponent ... Louisville entered last week’s game No. 9 in the Associated Press and No. 8 in the ESPN/USA Today.

Maybe if I pray really hard...