Anywhere and Nobody

Some of the best things on TV are the commercials. Take the "Anywhere" and "Nobody" ads running for the Chevy Tahoe, for example. Filmed by Eric Saarinen, they're gorgeous - just a real treat to watch. My favorite, "Nobody" couples a voiceover with James Garner reading a cool little poem coupled with striking use of colors and landscapes. Together, they really set the ad apart.

They're not hard-sell, but all about possibilities and adventures...They make me want to travel for places unseen. They make me want to test drive a Tahoe and dream of hitting the open back roads. Alas, there's a wide berth between want and reality, though: They're too rich for our blood, nomatter how nice they are. *Sniffle*

But I digress...Digital Producer published an interesting article about the ads and the techniques used in them (you can view the "Nobody" ad at their site, too).

Interestingly, the poem Patrick O'Leary wrote for the Tahoe ad.

Nobody Knows It But Me

There's a place that I travel
When I want to roam
And nobody knows it but me.

The roads don't go there
And the signs stay home
And nobody knows it but me.

It's far far away
And way way afar
It's over the moon and the sea
And whenever you're going
that's wherever you are
And nobody knows it but me.

-- Patrick O'Leary

Patrick O'Leary's homepage is not patrickoleary.com; that tidy domain was nabbed by a programmer of the same name - the creator of Matchmaker.com, actually. No, poet and ad-man Patrick's is a little more normal (i.e. obscure, were it not for Google), so here's a link. I think he needs a good domain name - how about you?

Quote of the Moment

"There is nothing like walking to get the feel of a country. A fine landscape is like a piece of music; it must be taken at the right tempo. Even a bicycle goes too fast."

-- Paul Scott Mowrer, American journalist and poet laureate

Tidbit: In 1929, Mowrer won a Pulitzer Prize in Journalism for his coverage of international affairs.

this site has been hacked

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Comments, Please

I am forever endebted to Pangie for getting comments working for me. Yippee! Now I not only host them myself, but I also get e-mail notifications when you kind readers leave a comment. No more do I have to worry if someone might have left a comment on an old entry, one which I might overlook. Whew - How lovely it is! I was pretty happy with YACCS, but really wanted e-mail notification. Now, there's only one hitch: Previous comments are gone from the site until I can figure out what to do with them. They're still on file at YACCS, but I'm not sure if it's worth bringing them over to the blog again.

The Farthest Extent Of My Soapbox

You know I don't have a political blog. I'm just not a very political person. I don't particularly like debating and frankly, I don't understand a lot of the complexities of politics. Anyway, I just read this article, Shame On You American-Hating Liberals, for the first time today. Woah. Coming from a normally liberal publication, this is really something. I'm glad my friend sent it my way -- It's good to hear someone outside the country assert that America isn't just a big ogre in the world.

Gems from Forwards

I've been catching up on my e-mail today and have some gems to pass along. I really ought to have a page of funny forwards I've received. I don't pass most along because I'm not a big forwarder, but I could always put them on a page for others to read at their leisure. Anyway...These struck me as funny and/or thought-provoking:

• The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
  
• OK, so what's the speed of dark?
  
• If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?
  
• My mechanic told me, "I couldn't repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder."
  
• To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.
  
• Everyone has a photographic memory, some just don't have film.
  

And the one which really tickled me today...

Did you hear about the Hindu who refused Novocain during a root canal? He wanted to transcend dental medication.

Oh, punny, punny.

Pure Silliness for Valentine's

Okay have fun tweaking this fella. Just a dose of silliness for everyone this fine Valentine's Day.

I have chicken cut into medallions and marinating in an oriental marinade. Carrots, broccoli, water chestnuts and bamboo shoots are standing ready in their respective freezer bag and can (hey - car battery's dead and I can't get out to buy fresh veggies). I've made the kitchen a more hospitable place and we shall enjoy a nice stir-fry dinner together when my hubby comes pulling into the driveway late tonight. Hope it comes out as good as it sounds, because stir-fry sounds really good.

Big White Guy's Engrish Giggles

If you're an even somewhat regular reader of my blog, you'll perhaps recall my writing about Engrish and its effects on my spirits. Well, now Big White Guy made a page on his site chock full of pictures he's taken of funny signs around Hong Kong. I'm still laughing at some of them - Y'all have fun!

Domesticities

My life's not real complex this week. We got the new Dell, and I've been having fun getting everything tweaked and put into its place. I am so glad to be back on Windows XP. I love the interface and the ease of networking with it. Howie switched his computer back over to XP now since he now has my hand-me-down which will better handle it. Our network was up and going in minutes, aaaaah.

We had a couple of days warm enough that the snow melted and turned the back yard into a mud pit, then an afternoon and night of rain...Then freezing temps and a dusting of snow again. At least the mud's frozen for a few days, nice when you're talking twelve muddy dog feet to wipe at the conclusion of each walk!

My whacked-out back is feeling better, slowly, and I've been puttering around the house vacumming and de-junking. Having this comfy recliner pulled up to the desk gives me little incentive to keep cleaning, but clean I must!

Zany Antics

Whadda ya get when a crazy Pangiecat gets curious about the inner workings of an Epson Stylus inkjet cartridge? Tune in and see!

Caution: The infirm and humor-impaired are strongly cautioned.

Jiggle The Mail Slot, Dude

We're nightowls, my husband and I, because of his work schedule. We usually toddle off to bed around 2 or 3:00am. This sometimes causes problems if people come a knockin' at some ungodly hour like, say, 9:00am. If a meter reader or a courier for FedEx or UPS comes while we're sleeping, there's a chance we just might miss out.

Well, no more! I made a handy little laminated sign and thumbtacked it to the front door. (Gee, made me remember Martin Luther, LOL).

Why the extra care? Tomorrow, the UPS truck will come rumbling and grumbling to a halt in front of our house. The dogs will bark, even before the driver has a chance to read the little sign and rattle the mail slot. Either way, Buddy will probably pee.

Why? Well, dudes, because we're getting a Dell!

We bought a refurbished Dell Dimension 4550 from Dell's Outlet site last week, and tomorrow's the big day. They have hundreds of systems listed, everything from the budget-conscious Dimension 2300 series systems to the Optiplex units to servers.

Our refurbished system has a full one-year warranty including in-home service should we need it. In true geek form, I must list what it includes:

Pentium 4 2.0GHz Processor

60GB EIDI hard drive (7200rpm)

256mb DDR SDRAM 266MHz

Soundblaster Live 5.1 sound card

GeForce4 MX 420 with 64MB RAM and TV-Out

Integrated NIC

CDRW drive (40x/10x/40x)

CD drive (48x)

1.44MB Floppy Drive

Keyboard

Logitech PS2 Mouse

Windows XP Home

Microsoft Works Suite 2002 etc.

Tool-free case - this is SO cool

I'm not bouncing off the walls about it that much. I mean, it's not like we don't have computers already. Okay, maybe I'm a little excited, especially since the CDRW drive is miles faster than our old one. That will make backups much less of a chore to do. And the hard drive is 20GB larger than our desktop's. Howie's very excited, though, because he gets to inherit my 866MHz system when the new one gets here. I'm getting the new one since I do the major graphics stuff and need the juice.

Mindless fun

Well, it's not totally mindless, but it's fun. Bookworm is sort of a combination of Scrabble and Boggle, only the letter combinations continually change. It's easier to show you than to describe it, so just click on over to the game and try it for yourself. There are a bunch of fun games there, and some are available for PC, Mac and PDA downloads, too.

Friday Five

Another sporadic installment of Friday Five questions (sporadic meaning my posts for them are sporadic, that is).

1. As a child, who was your favorite superhero/heroine? Why?
I never read comics much, but of TV superhero genre, I liked Batman. He was campy and fun, with colorful adversaries. I also thought of Bill Bixby's character on The Courtship of Eddie's Father, as a hero of sorts. Here was a dad who really loved his son, was kind and considerate of his feelings, and did his best for him. I watched the show all the time and wished I could be Eddie.

2. What was one thing you always wanted as a child but never got?
A decent father. Well, I got one as an adult with my step-dad, but it's not quite the same thing.

3. What's the furthest from home you've been?
It depends on what you call home. Furthest from my physical brick-and-mortar home would be Louisiana.

4. What's one thing you've always wanted to learn but haven't yet?
Consistency and self-discipline.

5. What are your plans for the weekend?
We're going to visit our best friends Saturday and Sunday night we're slated to watch movies with another friend.

Whispers in the Thaw

We finally have a break from the cold today, and we have a vividly blue, cloudless sky. What a lift THAT is, especially the rayon de soleil warming my upturned face. (It felt so good, so beautiful, I find out how to say it in French). These warming climes mean the snow no longer crunches crisply underfoot. The snow is melting and our deceptively clean-looking yard will be revealed for what it is: full of neglected leaves, twigs, and dog piles. We have a lot of work to do out there.

But for now...Carpé diem!

When I took the dogs out for their afternoon walk, Emma alerted me to the sky as a flock of Canada geese swept by overhead. There was no raucous honking heralding their arrival. I could see individual feathers on their wings and hear the wind whispering through those feathers as they flew close by us in their tight V-formation.

Our Couch Potato...And Turbospud

Our Emma Ada Riblet is part greyhound, part dalmation, and part who-knows-what. Whatever her genetics, Her Legginess is a fine example of how fun a little spice can be thrown in the traditional recipe. She's just great fun. Something which always tickles me is seeing how tiny an area she takes up when curled up for sleep, compared to how tall she is once her great, long legs unfold and she is upright once again.

When we first got her, she was a skinny little thing at the dog pound. Riblet was the first name we gave her since she was so ribby. I'd always been partial to the name Emma, though, so that's what we ended up calling her. The Ada is her Geek Name. Howie took her dog pound number, 141, and assigned the ASCII value to each number: ADA. For the story of how we found each other and fell in love, see my journal at DG.

Just today I ran across a delightful artist, Kim Parkhurst, who does greyhounds and other critters! I found her artwork while browsing eBay, but then zipped over to her site Turbospud and promptly fell in love. Turbospud is such an accurate name for a greyhound; anyone who knows them knows they're turbo-charged when it comes to running, but they're also some of the world's most adept couch potatoes.

Oh, and the No Nude Hounds site linked to at Turbospud is great; I can just see Emma in some of these fancy duds. With her choice of two humans or two other dogs to snuggle up to, I doubt she'd ever need the jammies; those coats are pretty neat, though.

...those damn pine trees is covered in fleas

That's what Barbara Erickson says of the hundreds of mange and insect-infested dogs seized from her property and car. This same woman faced the same sort of charges in 1996. The county she lived in has a thick file detailing the abuses the 300+ dogs suffered while under her "care".

Erickson had her day in court, 539 misdemeanor charges of animal neglect and a felony charge of criminal mischief.

(That reminds me: where the heck did the term criminal mischief come from? Mischief sounds more like short-sheeting a bed, loosening the lids of salt shakers at the diner, or putting itch powder in someone's Rebocks, you know? Legal phraseology certainly has its mysteries.)

Those of you who know me know that we have three of the most spoiled dogs in the US. Cats, too. So, these kinds of cases always get me. Hundreds of dogs! Hundreds! Where were the neighbors? Were they, like so many of us, afraid to make waves and risk their next-door neighbor's dislike? Did they just refer to her as "that crazy old dog lady?" and roll their eyes? *sigh*

Snow Day!

Okay, so it is Sunday and there was no school, anyway. But the dogs had a snow day and I managed to sit there and get pictures of them while juggling their leashes and staying (mostly) untangled. I fiddled with Adobe Photoshop's automation thingie and came up with a basic photo gallery. Hope you can view frames with your browser, because I think you'll need them in order to see the gallery. Let me know if everything loads okay for you. :)

Stories of the Great White North

First, I laughed when I checked out The Weather Channel's local weather information for our area earlier today:

Current Golf Index? Yeah, I'd say it's lousy! I don't even golf, and I didn't need the Weather Channel to tell me this. But, barring any other outdoor activities which come up, I can at least find solace in the fact that Miami Beach's next tide is at 1:37pm. Of course, I'd have to fly hundreds of miles to enjoy said tide, but I'm sure one of the Weather Channel's annoying pop-up ads can fix me up with a great deal on airfare. Sheesh.

Chari's bemoaning the cold, too, down in Orlando. It's all relative. Temperatures in the forties sound lovely to me, but then again, I'm not used January high's falling in the seventies. But, hey, she can go see the next tide if she wants to.

Her blog entry reminded me of the time DH and I enjoyed the hottub at a favorite Bed and Breakfast* one cold February night. We were reluctant to get out of that wonderful, churning hot water because it was only in the teens. When we finally did get out, it was pretty late and we'd pretty much turned into prunes. Pasty white prunes. Howie stepped into his sandals and attempted to take a step. My poor, frozen chosen pretty much tottered there, a living parody of cartoon characters whose feet are glued to the floor.

I had no sandals, so I dashed for the door. As I ran, my feet alternately froze to the sidewalk and peeled free. It made a noise with each step, sort of like parting Velcro, but quieter. The door was locked, too. It seems the guests did not see us out there and locked the great room's door for the night. Fortunately, we were sharing a suite with friends, and the suite was right above the door. Some frantic cries of "Hey! Help! Open the door!" finally proved successful, and we creaked and crackled our iced-over bodies inside and up the stairs.

The next morning, I could feel every bump and fiber of the berber carpet with the soles of my feet. I'm surprised there wasn't a series of size 11 footprints marking the previous night's progress on the sidewalk, neatly imprinted with the skin cells I left behind in my haste.

Now THAT'S cold! Like I said, though, it's all relative. My friend from southern Louisiana asked me if dog poop freezes where we live. Heck YES, it freezes! Makes it easier to clean up later, too. ;)

*By the way, we're friends with the couple enjoying breakfast in the photo there. They live in our town and we go to the same church; I think they were there for their anniversary. Hi, guys!

Nudes with Hats and Guitars

Well, darn it, I've already been outbid on an auction for a painting by our very own blogstress Vikki. It's a cat, too!

I found something else interesting while browsing the Self Represented Artists category, however. The colors are vibrant and the style's very fluid. Plus, it sure makes for good conversation, and isn't that what art's all about? Check out this painting by Rick Mazzaglia.

The painting made me giggle. Noooo, not because of the abstract nudes. I giggled because it made me wonder what on earth the story behind it must be. Lacking that, I must extemporize. Here's my best crack at it.

Theory 1: There seems to be some sort of bonfire in the middle of the picture. Guitars have been thrown in. I can only assume these females are womens lib advocates who, not caring they were horizontally challenged, threw their bras in a firey moment of solidarity. How liberated they felt! Why not take it a step further? They got carried away, flinging everthing into the fire. Everything except their hats, of course. Why? The hats symbolize their style and carefree wit.

Completely independent of Theory 1, here is Theory 2:

The women, for whatever reason, decided this get-together was clothing optional. Everyone within view opted for none. Now, here's the mystery: There does not appear to be anyone playing the featured guitars.

There must be spirits playing them, then. As we've all seen in popular movies regarding ghosts, the appearance of such a supernatural entity triggers a great drop in temperature. It's only natural, then to assume the ladies became cold. Being intelligent, well-read women, they realized that a high percentage amount of body heat is lost through the head.

That, friends, is why they're wearing hats. They're no dummies, just naked.

If the artist wants to tell us what this painting's really about, I'm open! But in the meantime, it's fun to theorize. Feel free to give your take on it, too. In the absence of truth, we're open to speculation!

The eBay links in this entry will only work as long as eBay keeps the completed auctions available for viewing (90 days, I believe)

Googling Myself

Now, I realize that must sound weird to those who have never heard of Google, the one of the coolest search engines around. In Internet jargon, Googling is the practice of going to Google and searching for peoples' names, your own included. Okay, so it's the ultimate in narcissism, but sometimes it's fun to see who might be linking to you or writing about you.

Anyway, I wasn't searching just Google, but several search engines simultaneously; Dogpile is the search engine I used, and it's one of the sites which searches multiple search engines at one time. I know it searches at least Google, AskJeeves (which I generally avoid), and Inktomi (company-paid search results), among others.

Anyway, I searched for the word Gardenwife and was amused to find a page containing hits from another search -- one for GE Spectra stoves. Bear with me. It's one of those "six degrees of separation" kind of things, just kind of odd. Because my Gardenwife's journal at Dave's Garden has an entry about the GE Spectra stove we bought, my journal page came up as a hit on this Crawldad site's search results. It's easier to show you than to keep on describing it, so here's the link my Dogpile search dug up.

Man, I really am easily amused.