There’s a lovely old Elm outside the apartment complex, this is a bit of it. Click for full size.
© C. Ford, all rights reserved.
Affinity
Art, Fun, & Nonsense.
There’s a lovely old Elm outside the apartment complex, this is a bit of it. Click for full size.
© C. Ford, all rights reserved.
TÝR – Hold The Heathen Hammer High.
The location where I spent this spring’s vacation has a very interesting path through the forest – many tree stumps along it are carved into beautiful statues, some somewhat realistic, some completely abstract. I saw an empty truck parked there with link to this website of Czech artist Jan Kužel. The style of the statues there corresponds to statues in the forest, so it is reasonable to deduce those statues are at least in part his work. These are done mostly with the use of a chainsaw, which is very impressive.
I checked and double checked and AFAIK Czech Law does not prohibit photographing and sharing of photographs of any art that is permanently displayed on public land with unrestricted access. Which is this case. So the photographs are mine, but the art they are depicting belongs to someone else. I will post only a couple of pictures at a time, because there is a lot of them.
It has begun on a clearing with a simple table and a couple of benches, and a road sign reading “To the Mountains” on the left and “Home” to the right.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
From Giliell, click for full size!
© Giliell, all rights reserved.
I am not entirely sure what species it is. Looks like Poseur dramaticus.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
With this offer you will receive eight (8) Freeze Dried Columbian Coffee Pouches-60 servings per pouch, one (1) Vanilla Pudding Pouch-10 servings per pouch, one (1) Morning Moo’s Low Fat Milk Pouch-20 servings per pouch.
End Times prepper pastor Jim Bakker dedicated his entire television program today to pitching his new line of survival coffee, telling his audience that things will get so desperate when the Last Days arrive that those who are prepared will be able to get a new car in exchange for one packet of this coffee.
Citing the passage in the Bible in which Joseph was put in charge of Pharaoh’s palace in order to prepare for a coming famine, Bakker reiterated his claim that God made Donald Trump president in order to give Christians an opportunity to prepare for the End Times … by buying Bakker’s survival products.
Oh yes, if you just have a bunch of buckets o’ yuck, everything will be just fine for all those “left behind”, you bet. I can’t imagine why Jim would care in the slightest what happens to anyone after he’s safely raptured and tucked into Jesus’s lap or whatever, so it has to come down to plain old greediness, as always.
When the End Times arrive, Bakker said, a bucket of coffee is going to be worth its weight in gold.
“What do you think that is worth if the sun don’t shine?” he asked. “What will it be worth if the power goes out and there’s no trucks running [due to an] EMP bomb or whatever they’re talking about for these Last Day events? This two gallon bucket of packs of coffee, you could trade them for whatsoever you want. You could probably get a new car for one packet of coffee.”
Uh, right. A new car which won’t run because EMP bomb and a lack of fuel, yeah? I’d rather hang onto the coffee, but not your bucket coffee, Jim. Besides, in all the hysterical depictions of “end times”, most people would be gone, disappeared into whatever, so it seems people could just help themselves to whatever they liked. I just can’t find any motivation to spend $80.00 on your crappy coffee and morning moo. Ugh.
Several of my pictures are about hands, one way or the other. I liked drawing hands. Not so dissecting them.
What I said about watching human heads sans skin in formaldehyde being creepy goes doubly so for hands. Mucking around in someones guts left me cold, but dead hands I have found disconcerting. In many aspects a human hand is much more intimate than, not to put a too fine a point on it, genitals. Genitals in a jar are just another organ. A hand is a part of someone’s life in a much more profound way.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
Human hands are a marvel. Their flexibility is nearly unsurpassed in the animal kingdom and they are extremely good in their ability to grasp things ranging from feathers and eggs to sticks and stones. But what people generally do not know is that the strength of the hand does not lie in the muscles in the palm. Palm muscles only position the fingers and shape the palm, but what curls and straightens the fingers – and thus gives them strength – ale muscles of the forearm, whose tendons go under a series of ligaments to the base of the last digit segment like ropes through pulleys.
I have also found that many people do not realize that the smallest of fingers – the pinky – is essential for strong grip. Without pinky it would be difficult to get a firm grip on a tool or a weapon, be it a hammer or a chisel, an axe or a sword.
The one interesting thing that Professor Kos has mentioned and I remember is the muscle Musculus palmaris longus. This muscle is not present in all people, and in some people it is present only in one hand. Its absence has no ill effect whatsoever, so from evolutionary point of view it seems to be a neutral trait.
Orden Ogan – Gunman. Lyrics at the link.
Milkweed
Milkweed, before the autumn fuzzies set in, ©voyager, all rights reserved
It’s a beautiful morning so Jack and I set out early trying to beat the anticipated heat and we came upon some glorious milkweed. We didn’t see any butterflies, but the Monarchs love this stuff so I think they may have been hiding from the large snorfling dog.
Our first port of call after leaving Moscow was the beautiful and ancient city of Uglich, which lies on the southern portion of the Volga River. These photos were taken just after we slipped through yet another lock and our ship headed towards the landing dock at Uglich. Most photos are below the fold.
Lock on the Volga River
Magpies here are very difficult to photograph. They are shy and scamper away at the slightest movement even behind a window.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
This is Jack’s happy, ©voyager, all rights reserved
When I was nursing we used to have something called a triple H enema, which stood for High, Hot and a Hell of a lot. Today is a triple H kind of day…High (temp 31°) Hot (humidity 80%) and Hell (ish). It’s too hot for Jack to even go for a walk so instead I pre-cooled the car and took him to the lake for a swim. He happily paddled around for about 20 minutes while I lounged in the shade of a willow tree and then we hurried back home to the luxury of our air-conditioned house. We won’t be seen outside again until after dark.
Sam Nunberg appears on MSNBC (screen grab).
Sam Nunberg is pushing Hope Hicks for chief of staff, and his reasons are…interesting.
“She is actually perfect for what the president is looking for,” Nunberg replied. “He is thinking of not having a chief of staff. What he wants is to operate like the 26th floor of Trump Tower where he had a strong-willed, very good woman in Rhona Graff handling the calls, knowing him getting his zen, things like that.”
“He will listen to women more than men, believe it or not, strongly saying, that wouldn’t be a good idea,” he continued. “She would be perfect for this. He had to adapt to the presidency… political gravity will never apply to him.”
Oh my. No chief of staff? I’m sure that would work out wonderfully. It is in line with the Tiny Tyrant’s desire to be a dictator. Christ, just when you keep trying to tell yourself it couldn’t get worse, it always gets worse. I am not looking forward to slamming into the bottom of the barrel at speed.
As for zen, hahahahahahahahahahahaha. Oh, I can’t think of a worse word to apply to the Tiny Tyrant. I’m fair confident in saying that chances are high that Trump doesn’t know the meaning of the word. “Zen and the Art of Being A Dictator“.
Back when Donny was confined to Trump Tower, he didn’t run a damn thing, and that’s how he wants to do things now? Well, it would be better if he stopped trying to run things…
“We’re dealing with a new president here,” he explained. “I would tell you Hope has very good political instincts. They came to her very quickly during the short time I worked with her, and she was essentially his gatekeeper during the election. And she would be great at that position, and she doesn’t take — she knows the way he’s going to work.”
“She’s not going to be insulted like John Kelly that the president is going to do what the president is going to do,” Nunberg concluded.
Yeah, we all know what we’re dealing with, and “political instincts” be damned. What’s required is someone who is actually qualified for the fucking job, but I guess we can’t even have that much in the revolving door regime.
Via RawStory.