A Day In The Life Of A Shark

Before I get started today, if you haven't seen it by chance, stop at our joint blog Basking In The Afterglow, where our most recent blog has fun with wedding pics...

Now then, I'm doing something different this time out, namely writing from the point of view of a certain animal throughout the day, one that gets something of a bad rap. Not that this blog will particularly help their reputation, mind you. To get you in the mood, check out this commercial.

And of course, the ideal music to accompany such a blog must be this. Yes, I know, it might bring back unpleasant memories. That particular bit of music does have a way to get under your skin, doesn't it? Particularly if you often think that we're going to need a bigger boat.

And so, let us begin....

Dawn. Woke up feeling rather hungry. Oddly enough, do I sleep at night? I have to keep moving, otherwise my gills don't process oxygen through the water, so how on earth do I manage to rest? Is this too abstract a thought for one of the apex predators in the ocean? I'm not sure. Maybe I can sort it out after breakfast.

Half past seven. Ate a passing seal. Rather blubbery. Will do as an appetizer.

8 AM sharp. Wondering how I know what time it is. What does time mean to an apex predator of the sea?

9 AM. Hit the smorgasbord. Beach full of swimmers at one of those resorts the walking dinner entrees stay at. Very tasty. Stuffed myself silly eating whatever tried to swim away from me. I may have a swim trunk or bikini fabric stuck between my teeth. Must find one of those helper fish that clean us up in exchange for us not feasting on them. Wondering how that level of trust evolved between us and them over millions of years of evolution. Why is it we just let them swim in and out of our mouths and clean us up without eating them? I'll go find one and ask. After I digest breakfast for awhile.

10:30. Wondering if I might have eaten something that disagreed with me. Slightly upset stomach. Will sit back and watch movie on underwater television. Delicious dinner entrees they might be, the walking smorgasbords do make good movies.

1 in the afternoon. Finished watching Jaws. Wondering why the bad guys win. Feeling a bit peckish.

1:45. Finished feasting on a Russian scuba diver at a reef. Left an aftertaste of vodka in my mouth. Perhaps he should have cut back on the drinking. Too late to advise him of that now.

3 PM. Afternoon tea with the hammerheads, feasting on tuna as a snack. Still tasting vodka from that Russian.

4:30. Terrorized Discovery Channel crew by busting away at their shark cage. Ate two of them.

5:25. Swam after kayaker in ocean. Left him alone after discovering he works as an attorney. Professional courtesy.

7 PM. Dinner time. Attacked a boat full of French tourists. Ate six. Strong taste of good red wine after the fact. They had good taste in their alcohol. Unlike that awful stuff the Russian was drinking.

10:30. Feeling slightly drunk by all of the alcohol I've consumed today through eating drinkers. Wondering if the hair of the dog will cure what ails me. Seeing as how there are no dogs swimming about this time of the night, will go seek out late night skinny dippers off that same resort I hit this morning for breakfast. Just hope the dinner entrees go quietly without a fight. And that they haven't been drinking cheap vodka.

Unbearable Cuteness

Just look at that face. You would do just about anything that kitten asked you to do. Am I right? Of course I am. And that is precisely the way our feline overlords, our masters and mistresses... in short, the ultimate form of life on the planet, use to end us entirely to their will.

We tolerate just about anything and everything they get to doing, even if it means chaos and mayhem might ensue. Even if it costs us a priceless Ming vase. Why? Because we know they're a superior form of life then us lowly humans, and they never let us forget it.

And so today, I thought I'd present another of these image blogs, showing off the epic cuteness and sheer attitude of our feline overlords. All hail the cats, for truly, they are blessed with having such submissive servants as we lowly humans....

Norma found this one a few days back, and I got a kick out if it....

Muffin, of course, is the wisest character in the Pickles strip. As it should be...

Ah, if only... the so called (human) Tiger Mom is a bit of a self absorbed harridan, at least that's what I thought when I heard of her last year....

And so life goes on. Those of us wise enough to accept our place in the greater scheme of things freely acknowledge cats as the supreme form of life on the planet. Those of us who delude ourselves into thinking we're the highest form of life continue to delude ourselves.

And our masters and mistresses watch over us with indifference, waiting for dinner, catnip, or the chance to walk all over that book we're reading and go to sleep. The fact that we were reading is irrelevant.

Coming in Season Four of The Walking Dead....

There's also the upcoming Star Wars Episode VII: Cloak Of The Catnip. No, I'm not kidding. I've seen the script. It starts out with the death of Jar-Jar Binks. Oh, I've said too much. George Lucas is going to have me kneecapped....

Life is always easier when you have minions to do your bidding.

Luciano looks smaller then I expected...

And so I leave you with one last homage to our feline overlords. One that will result in a certain song being stuck in your head for the rest of the day.

You're welcome, by the way.

D Is For Diplomacy

It's been awhile since I've done one of these, so I thought I'd play around with a one-off of sorts today, by tossing a Muppet into the seething cauldron that is Middle East peace negotiations. Well, not literally into the cauldron... well, you know what I mean. Anyway, without further ado....

Peace Talks Fail, Iranians Blame UN Muppet Envoy

New York (AP) Middle East peace talks have stalled at the United Nations after the Iranian delegation walked out of a session. Ambassador Farid Ebadi and his staff stormed out in fury during a closed session with the delegations of other regional parties. The United Nations continues to remain concerned with the nation’s nuclear program and intentions towards other countries in the region. They have appointed a special envoy as a chief negotiator for the talks. The envoy is a rather unusual choice, given that he is a Muppet.

“We will not be subject to such utter nonsense!” Ebadi declared before a group of reporters. The Ambassador looked outraged, clearly frustrated by the events of the day. “We have our own destiny to write, not be dictated to by outsiders and fools! We are meant to be feared and respected, not ridiculed!”

The tirade went on for a half hour, with the Ambassador switching back and forth between English and Farsi, ranting about conspiracies, Western interests, and vague threats. Finally, one of the reporters asked, “Why are you walking out of the discussions?”

 “Because the envoy is a puppet!” Ebadi answered, red in the face with anger. “A felt children’s puppet with weird hair and weird eyes! And all he manages to say is meep, meep, meep. It doesn’t even make sense! Such gestures are proof to us why we must hold the UN in such contempt! Why we must forge our own path! I promise, this will not go unanswered. For this display of contempt upon us, we will rain down fire on all of our enemies! As soon as we can figure out how to stop our glorious scientists from getting killed or disappearing and get the bombs finish… um, did I say too much?”

The ambassador stormed off, followed by his entourage. Out of the room came the special envoy, looking confused, wired, and slightly on edge. Beaker the Muppet has been working carefully to help the peace process along, trying to bring together competing visions for the region. It has been largely a thankless task. He was asked for his comment on the situation.

“Meep! Meep meep meep! Meep! Meep!”

Rick Santorum And The Sweater Vest of Azkaban

Once more unto the primary breach, dear friends, once more, or close up the wall with our campaign staff dead!

William Shakespeare's ghost is going to kill me for that, I think...

When last we parted, Governor Mittens had salvaged the lead in the endless Republican nomination process by slaying the Fig Newton... er, the Newtron Bomb in Florida, and managing to get through Nevada relatively unscathed. Then Governor Mittens had himself something of a bad day.

It turns out party faithful in Missouri, Colorado, and Minnesota think better of He Whose Last Name Must Not Be Googled.

The editorial cartoonists of the world have been kept busy as of late on the whole circus, and so once again I present some of the best. When I first started gathering together pics for this one, Gingrich (aka Fig Newtons, aka The Newtron Bomb) had been busy savaging Governor Mittens at all opportunities. Oddly, he's been very, very quiet as of late. This is what happens when no one's paying attention to you anymore.

Maybe it's that people are offended by a family values candidate who by his very actions shows such disregard for the notion of marriage. Maybe it's that the angry old crank routine isn't connecting with voters. Maybe Fig Newtons is running out of campaign dough. At any rate, Fig Newtons has been having a lot of Newtron Bomb days lately, almost as if he's set to go off....

You could almost feel the bell tolling for the Newtron Bomb the moment he started talking about permanent bases on the moon, of all things....

It does appear that the Newtron Bomb has run itself completely out of steam after the South Carolina Anomaly (there's a blog title in that somewhere). One of two things shall happen: he'll either return to complete irrelevance from whence he came, only to return in November claiming that the election disaster would never have happened if he had been nominated, or... some unforeseen turn of events will give him a state victory and new life. We shall see.

Not that it's been an easy couple of weeks for Governor Mittens. His inability to grasp the way an ordinary person lives is hampering his campaign. So is his tendency to put his foot in his mouth.

And President Obama takes every word Governor Mittens gets wrong, and files it away for further use after the Republican convention. He must be pleased at how thoroughly the GOP is doing his job for him....

Governor Mittens even got the endorsement of Donald "The Windblown Combover Ego" Trump. You'd think he'd go out of his way to avoid being associated with that blowhard egomaniac waste of space who thinks the universe revolves around him. Governor Mittens, this is probably going to come back and bite you hard...

As mentioned, of course, Minnesota, Missouri, and Colorado saw greater support among Republican voters for Rick Santorum, aka Sweater Vest, aka He Whose Last Name Must Not Be Googled. The Santorum Surprise has changed the nomination circus again, at least until momentum swings the other way again. It had better. No one can ever take seriously a guy with that last name, not after googling his name.

Oh, and Ron Paul is still in the running, but you'd have to dig deep to find any attention paid to the resident Crazy Old Man of the GOP....

It's been a long joke, this particular nomination process, with no shortage of bad jokes running for the chance to lose to President Obama in November. This is a bad thing for the party, which seems hellbent on committing political suicide. At the same time, it might be a good thing in the long term for the party. Purge the nutcases and wingnuts once and for all, rebuild, and come back again down the line.

May I make a suggestion to you Americans who are sitting on the fence about where to cast your vote?  Talli pointed this one out in the last blog, and so I present it to you. Ladies and gentlemen, I offer you the solution.

And finally, rumor has it that Sarah Palin is musing about stepping back into the GOP ring and making a run at the nomination. It seems in the World According To Sarah, if there's no clear nominee by the time of the convention, she may have to... step in, as she puts it. To this prospect, I can only offer up this picture as an expression of what I think of that....