Cats and Weather

The weather is getting nasty. Terrible winds. And I have two cats missing: Coco and Sammy.

* * *

0900

Got 'em all in. And not a moment too soon. We need a good storm, something that turns our back yard into a lake and the front into a pond. I don't feel up to watering the lawn this year, and we are very dry. Those last rains did practically nothing for us.

Dubya the Artist

The news is a little old now of Dubya becoming a painter. It has been a good joke for a while, or a sad joke depending on how you look at it. Regardless, I like this little summary of Dubya's charmed life leading to his new career as an artist, and I want to keep it.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

The greatest work of art George W. Bush ever took part in was in 2008, when an Iraqi journalist threw two shoes at his head. “This is a farewell kiss from the Iraqi people, you dog,” screamed the journalist, Muntadhar al-Zaidi, who had been arrested twice by U.S. forces during the occupation.

Bush dodged the shoes with the same ease with which he’d had dodged consequences all his life; those for drunk driving, for ruined companies, stolen elections, war crimes, the destruction of Zaidi’s country.

After he dodged the shoes, Bush joked about free countries. Meanwhile, guards beat Zaidi bloody. Police tortured him during the nine months he served in jail.

Bush’s first art exhibition, “The Art of Leadership: A President’s Personal Diplomacy,” lacks the apt metaphor of Zaidi’s shoe throw. Bush’s 30 oil-on-board portraits of world leaders will hang at the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas through June 3. As artifact, they’re fascinating, even if as art they’re not.

-- Molly Crabapple at Politico

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

( Cartoon )

Celebrities and Stuff

( Read more... )

Monday

I let the cats out. It was a hard rain, but just another of those short-lived affairs. The sun came out in the afternoon, and we are basically dry again. At least it is nice and cool, like early spring, like early March. It is late in the season for this sort of cool front, and I cannot think of a lovelier gift - to be a little chilly in the afternoon in the middle of April.