More Friday Pet Blogging | Kitten War!

Mrs. Brainwise gets the credit for this link...

Cute is hell.

Friday Pet Blogging (Sorry it's late!) | Peek

OK! OK! I'm sorry this is sooo late. I was not feeling well today. But, for the record, I was planning to do this bright and early. I was just not very bright when it was early.

Anyway...

Mrs. Brainwise loves pets. Just loves 'em. So much so that she has made something of a name for herself in the pet-sitting circles. (I don't know if there truly are such circles. But if there were, trust me ... she would be in the center. Oh, just work with me on this!) And pet-sitting usually requires house-sitting as well. Er, well, staying at the house to keep an eye on the pet in the evening. I don't know if Otis is jealous of the other pets, since he has never seen them, but he does know what the suitcase means.

"Mommy's not going to be here! Oh nooooooo!"

"I'm holding the jacket and this toothpaste box as my hostages."

Just look at his face! Click the pic for a larger version at Flickr. Oh my gods, he is just too cute. The little beast.

OK. So the pic does not exactly capture the "Oh No" aspect of his reaction to Mrs. Brainwise's upcoming departure, but trust me. He was bummed. He just got too distracted by the toothpaste box. He actually tried to get into it!

Of course, that's the shot I missed! :(

But Otis is truly missing his mommy. I don't stay in one place long enough for him to get a good snuggle going.

The Modulator has a compilation of today's pet posts from other bloggers. Previous Milo & Otis appearances on Prophet or Madman are indexed here ... just in case you missed one. And do keep your eyes peeled for the next installment of the Carnival of the Cats, served fresh every Sunday.

Photo Date: May 2, 2004

"Pope My Ride"

Rising Hegemon's Dr. Attaturk asks the new Pope for a favor. He just wants a little help with the ladies, and it seems that a certain bulletproof vehicle might do the trick (but not, of course, get them to turn any tricks). Hilarious!

Oh, for the love of Pod(casting)

Jazz, Running Scared's resident podcast-o-phile, is probably all over this story from webpronews.com: Adam Curry Returns To The Airwaves The podcast inventor joins SIRIUS Satellite Radio with -- wait for it now -- a podcasting show. This joint venture between SIRIUS and PodCast.com, called Adam Curry's PodShow, is set to debut later this month.

"Podcasting is not just about portable media players," said Curry, the former star MTV VJ who developed podcasting in mid-2004. "Podcasting is an entirely new form of broadcasting that enables anyone to create powerful content.

Now, if video killed the radio star. And music downloads are killing the RIAA. What exactly will podcasting kill (or thoughtfully maim)?

Image borrowed from B3TA

Quotable

Today's quotable speaks to us from ancient Egypt...

Put writing in your heart, that you may protect yourself from hard labor of any kind and be a magistrate of high repute.

This good advice comes from a 19th Dynasty (1298 - 1187 B.C.E.) Egyptian inscription. In other words, learn your hierglyphs and you'll be on easy street. Source: Egyptian School Daze; Archeology Magazine, March/April 2005

Smalltown (Big) Blues

Buck has posted his story of small mindedness in a small town. He, DJ Dominatra, and David & Tammy Marsteller all have my sincere wishes that this thing gets worked out for the good of all -- particularly the music fans who could ultimately suffer.

Mapping Cultural Values

The World Values Survey has released their Inglehart Values Map, which "visualizes the strong correlation of values in different cultures." The map shows that "countries are clustered in a remarkably predictable way." Really? What do you think:

It seems to me that this graphic is the result of a couple of ivory-tower profs who tried really hard to squeeze a bunch of unrelated data into an almost meaningful diagram. And I am very suspicious of their data collection methods. I mean, when they mention Traditional/ Secular-rational values, whose tradition are they using? I would say that Judeo-Christian values differ depending on whether you are looking at pre- or post-industrial society. And in both of those cases, the Judeo-Christian set's values are decidedly different from, say, those of a folkway oriented belief system such as Asatru (inspired by the pre-Christian culture in Northern Europe), the Lakota tradition (as just one example of Native American Spiruality), or Andean Shamanism (as an example of a pre-Columbian tradition in South America). Go through the whole thing here:

• Map and Explanation
• Background Info

It's TIME for a Convention

But not a conventional convention, nosiree. This is the Time Traveler Convention, hosted at MIT (42.360007,-071.087870 in decimal degrees) this Saturday. From the web page:

We need you to help PUBLICIZE the event so that future time travelers will know about the convention and attend. This web page is insufficient; in less than a year it will be taken down when I graduate, and futhermore, the World Wide Web is unlikely to remain in its present form permanently. We need volunteers to publish the details of the convention in enduring forms, so that the time travelers of future millennia will be aware of the convention. This convention can never be forgotten! We need publicity in MAJOR outlets, not just Internet news. Think New York Times, Washington Post, books, that sort of thing. If you have any strings, please pull them.

And they have a few suggestions for the help they need:

Write the details down on a piece of acid-free paper, and slip them into obscure books in academic libraries! Carve them into a clay tablet! If you write for a newspaper, insert a few details about the convention! Tell your friends, so that word of the convention will be preserved in our oral history! A note: Time travel is a hard problem, and it may not be invented until long after MIT has faded into oblivion. Thus, we ask that you include the latitude/longitude information when you publicize the convention.

You can also make an absolute commitment to publicize the convention afterwards. In that case, bring a time capsule or whatever it may be to the party, and then bury it afterwards.

I have a few more specific suggestions for the help they need, but we won't get into that right now -- if ya know what I mean. But even after saying that -- and despite the fact that Prophet or Madman isn't acid-free ... paper -- I'll post the info and link here anyway. Why? Because it's fun! And it gives me another excuse to mention my brilliant Dr. Who Revival idea, and even post a pic of the good ol' TARDIS:

TARDIS Console

If you decide to go, and you are not currently a Time Lord, you might want to check one or two of the books from the convention's recommended reading list. Hmmmm ... I wonder if one should RSVP from the future? Thanks to Heretical Ideas for the info.

Monday Afternoon Poetry Blogging

National Poetry Month is over, but that doesn't mean I have to stop the Monday Poetry Blogging... TODAY

Today he is Batman His true identity concealed via his jet-black cape still damp from the dryer

Today he duels evil Racing against time in his convertible top, two-door plastic Playskool car

Today he breaks cryptic codes Hacking into his Etch A Sketch and disabling reactor buttons on his mom’s cell phone

Today he saves Gotham City One cruel-intentioned peace-threatening plush toy at a time

Tonight he departs to the Bat Cave After a long day of portraying Batman he closes his eyes and ponders what is to come tomorrow

Tomorrow he is Captain Hook and Barbie is walking the plank

-- Jessica McKeon, winner of the fifth annual PARADE Classroom® Poetry Contest For more about this young poet, see the Fresh Voices feature in the April 24, 2005 issue of PARADE Magazine.

Quotable | Miles Davis

Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there. -- Miles Davis (1926 - 1991)

 And if you can only play one Miles disc, make certain it's one of these two albums. (I tried to pick only one, but I could not decide between them).

Miles Davis: Kind of Blue

Miles Davis: Sketches of Spain

My father introduced me to the musical genius of Miles Davis. I don't remember any fanfare surrounding my first listen to Kind of Blue. I may have even found that one on my own. But I distinctly remember my father's hand in the Sketches of Spain experience. He sat me down with the Sketches liner notes and spun the disc. I was amazed at how clearly the music evoked the land of Spain. And, if I am not mistaken, these recordings were born out of Davis' intense love of Spanish music, a love that was fostered even though he had yet to travel to the Iberian peninsula. Seriously. Just get a copy. You won't regret it.