Scarey Costumes...

...and voter apathy. This recent Foxtrot nails both (click image to go to the comic page). Check it out as soon as you can because gocomics.com limits the free viewing period to only a week or so.

Friday Pet Blogging | Catanatomy

Mrs. Brainwise has been snapping pics faster than I can upload them to my Flickr account (here). And about 2-4 times more often than I post here these days. But your patience has been rewarded with this up close shot of Milo's cute li'l nose ... and tongue.

Milo thinks Friday Pet Blogging is lip-smacking good!

Check out the rest of the parts in this set: Catanatomy

And one by one, the pet blogging posts steal my sanity ...

More Pet Blogging See the Friday Ark, featuring a compilation of today's pet blogging posts, over at The Modulator. Check the M&O Archives for some previous Milo & Otis appearances. Carnival of the Cats, coming at you every Sunday. And one of the funniest/cutest/obsessivest (OK, I know that's not a word!) sites for cat photos, StuffOnMyCat.com is a must see. Take it from them: Stuff + Cats = Awesome!

Kryptonite?

File under: "Life imitates ... comics?" OK, so it didn't happen in, say, Smallville. But you still have to love a story about finding a "rare" meteorite in Kansas.

Rare meteorite found in Kansas field By ROXANA HEGEMAN, Associated Press Writer AP Photo: Workers pull dirt away from a 154-pound meteorite as a team from the Houston Museum... GREENSBURG, Kan. - Scientists located a rare meteorite in a Kansas wheat field thanks to new ground-penetrating radar technology that someday might be used on Mars. The dig Monday was likely the most documented excavation yet of a meteorite find, with researchers painstakingly using brushes and hand tools to preserve evidence of the impact trail and to date the event of the meteorite strike. Soil samples also were bagged and tagged and organic material preserved for dating purposes. [ Full Story ]

Now, before you start combing rural Kansas for Kents, you should know that "scientific experts at the site were able to debunk prevailing wisdom that the spectacular Brenham meteorite fall occurred 20,000 years ago. Its location in the Pleistocene epoch soil layer puts that date closer to 10,000 years ago." But according to Carolyn Sumners, director of Astronomy at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, "Native Americans could have seen it." Hmmm... might be fodder for a decent Elseworlds storyline.

Friday Pet Blogging | Crate

Left to his own devices, Otis will get into any and everything. Point in case: my folding cart with I used to haul some stuff to a presentation last month:

Hiya! Come down and play!!

You can see the crate love (heh heh) Otis has for this new toy of his at Crate and Otis.

And one by one, the pet blogging posts steal my sanity ...

More Pet Blogging See the Friday Ark, featuring a compilation of today's pet blogging posts, over at The Modulator. Check the M&O Archives for some previous Milo & Otis appearances. Carnival of the Cats, coming at you every Sunday. And one of the funniest/cutest/obsessivest (OK, I know that's not a word!) sites for cat photos, StuffOnMyCat.com is a must see. Take it from them: Stuff + Cats = Awesome!

Friday Pet Blogging | Sunbeam

Mrs. Brainwise recently spent some quality time with Milo, and got some quality photos out of it, too. Here is the first of several shots of Milo in another of his fave spots: catching the afternoon sun by the back door.

Milo lovin' the sunbeam.

He looks like he is hugging a sunbeam. Just look at him! Oh!! He is certainly a ray of light in our household. I'll post the rest of the set later.

And one by one, the pet blogging posts steal my sanity ...

More Pet Blogging See the Friday Ark, featuring a compilation of today's pet blogging posts, over at The Modulator. Check the M&O Archives for some previous Milo & Otis appearances. Carnival of the Cats, coming at you every Sunday. And one of the funniest/cutest/obsessivest (OK, I know that's not a word!) sites for cat photos, StuffOnMyCat.com is a must see. Take it from them: Stuff + Cats = Awesome!

Bears to the Rescue

Funny (Mock) Headline for a Tense Situation:

Bears Tell Kim Jong Il To Cut The Shit *

* Note: thebrushback.com is like theonion.com, but for sports.

Happy Leif Erikson Day!

1968 U.S. postage stamp honoring Leif Ericson (image at Wikipedia)

October 9 of each year is Leif Erikson Day.

• Approved by joint resolution (Public Law 88-566) in the 88th Congress on September 2, 1964.
• Read a presidential proclamation: George W. Bush - October 8, 2002.
• Honors our country's rich Nordic-American heritage.

So go out and celebrate a European discoverer who actually made it to North America. (Yeah, that's a dig at Mr. Columbus).

Quotable | Two Pastorals

And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.
 -- William Shakespeare (As You Like It II, i)

The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.
 -- Tennessee Williams (Don Quixote's last words in Camino Real)

Mashed Veggie(Tale)s

NBC has a problem with Bob the Tomato. Well, not so much with the li'l red guy himself, but with Bob and (his buddy) Larry's penchant for talking about God and the Bible. Seems that network execs placed an unusual requirement on the show in order to be broadcast: Edit out God. Well, to be fair, I should point out that the show's producers don't have to edit out every reference to God ... just the non-historical ones. Now, keep in mind that NBC is the same network that was behind the (cancelled) series, The Book of Daniel. So, one might feel obliged to forgive these execs for being a tad God-phobic as it were. But while the aforementioned TBOD featured a pill-popping priest who had full on conversations with a rather laid back Jesus (and a rather varied supporting cast), Bob and Larry of BigIdeas' VeggieTales series don't do anything more controversial than offer watered down versions of Bible stories and morality plays for kids. And the conservative Parents Television Council is not happy with the decision. The CNN.com article quotes L. Brent Bozell, president of the PTC:

"What struck me and continues to strike me is the inanity of ripping the heart and soul out of a successful product and not thinking that there will be consequences to it. The series is successful because of its biblical world view, not in spite of it. That's the signature to `VeggieTales."'

Now, I'm not exactly a fan of VeggieTales (though I suppose it is slightly less grating than Barney, and significantly less cheesy than BibleMan), but I find NBC's move to edit religious references out of a religious program to be counter-intuitive at best. I mean, wouldn't that be akin to purchasing the rights to air episodes of The Crocodile Hunter, but then mandating that all footage of Steve Irwin (rest in peace, mate) wrestling with crocodiles be edited out. Crikey! What's next?

• Preventing the cast of The Biggest Loser from using the words "exercise" and "diet"?
• Cutting doctor-to-doctor conflicts from ER?
• Putting a gag order on all courtroom activity in Law & Order?
• Forbidding cameos of Stan Lee in a movie based on Marvel Comics' characters? (OK, so that might actually be a good idea).

I'm just wondering out loud here. But if the point behind this move is to not have any station-sanctioned prosyletizing, then maybe the network will have to cut all public service announcements, political ads, and spots for Sunday Night Football. You see, I'm not getting down on NBC simply because they are cutting Christian messages. I couldn't care one whit about that. I'm not gonna watch the show anyway. But I am going to call them on the fact that they are cutting out the essence of a show they paid for. So, I say to them, if you are uncomfortable with a show's message, don't buy the show. If you're too lazy to develop your own show for that Saturday morning slot, just air some more infomercials, 'kay?

Update | Blog Roll

If you will kindly turn your attention to the right sidebar, you will see a new addition under my "Fave Bloggage." Please welcome Bjorn Grimnir and his fine project, which is titled A Heathen Blog. Go ahead and check it out. I am humbled by the breadth of his subject pool, and the depth of his analysis.