Indifferent pug with lichen

I think she's gotten tired of having her picture taken. She really had a much better time on vacation than it looks.

Technical difficulties

Kind of bad weather for swimming. Fortunately, we never go swimming at the beach. Not so fortunately, we got home and found there was a power failure that fried our cable modem.

After lots of yelling on the phone, tomorrow I have to go try to get one, or else I can't really work. In the meantime we're hoping that our neighbor's wireless doesn't stop working. Thank goodness for people who don't worry about computer security.

At the beach! Not too wet!

There was something like a monsoon yesterday and they forecast a 90% chance of rain today, so it was not looking good. But it's 4 PM and so far we've been having a good time outdoors all day. All the rest of us would get fired if we did our job as poorly as weather forecasters do, but at least it is not raining on my vacation.

And the mattresses are so much more poofy!

So we have huge nasty economic perturbations AND gas lines; why doesn’t it feel like the 70s? Better graphics, I think. The society’s look-and-feel is set on perma-shiny, and even if we do see apple vendors on every corner, they will have signs they made at Kinkos. And the apples will be organic.

-James Lileks at Lileks.com.

yes sir yes sir three chins down

Bamu and Kinako and friend.

Middle age is not for sissies, but preferable to the alternative

Nature, in her infinite wisdom, did us the favor of having our vision deteriorate at the same time that our skin becomes wrinkled. We had to go and screw it up by inventing eyeglasses.

But just after thinking this, I noticed I was having trouble seeing a tiger at a distance yesterday. Which could have been a problem if it were happening somewhere other than at the zoo. I guess the survival value of eyeglasses outweighs their cost to vanity.

Question regarding the banking crisis

If you want to keep your money in a mattress, are you supposed to put it between the mattress and the boxspring, or are you supposed to actually cut the mattress open and put the money inside?

Business opportunity

My sister emailed me over the weekend to say not to try emailing my mother, who just moved, because her email is not working. A little later I went out to the bookstore, and as I passed their huge selection of cards I realized that I needed a sympathy card for someone whose email is not working. Why hasn't someone invented that? How could it lose? It's the only kind of card that can't possibly be put out of business by an email.

At the Zoo

I'm writing an article for the zoo magazine about enrichment. Here's some stuff for the sloth bear, ready to be filled with mulch and such with treats hidden inside. The bears don't care if it looks pretty as long as it's fun to dig in.

Fungus

Huh, and I thought this was a spectacular fungus. Shows how much I know.

Here's a more panoramic view:


This is the kind of thing that goes on when people go hiking without me. How come I never get to see the good stuff?

The pug mind

Lilly has developed that obnoxious habit of barking like a hysterical lunatic at other dogs that walk by. She doesn't do it every time, for mysterious reasons that I initially thought had to do with being surprised by the appearance of the other dog. So I started warning her when I saw a dog coming.

This seemed at first to work and I don't know where things went wrong, but in any case at some point I started to say 'no barking' instead of just "there's a dog."

Now, when she hears me say 'no barking' she immediately whips around and starts barking like a maniac. Apparently I am such an accurate predictor of dogs that need to be barked at that she doesn't even wait to see the actual dog.

Mysteries of technology, etc.

Nothing I can think of to post would be funnier than this.

Also I don't usually delve into politics but let's just think of this as a plea for civility.

The amazing animal mind

A waitress had just come and left, and all of a sudden there's Rose in my face. Unfortunately, all the waitress had brought at that point was napkins and silverware.

An animal that knows what a waitress does. It's a mind boggling concept.

Oom Pa

The band was very nice later when Lilly had a barking fit while they were playing. When the piece was over they announced its name, "for two alpenhorns and two pugs." It was only the fault of one pug, though.

Cute babies

Bullfrog tadpoles in a big concrete tank where they can't swim away from us, for a change.