Walter Potter was a victorian taxidermist and eccentric. This website memorializes him and his freaky, wonderfrul taxidermy tableaux. Imagine “Dogs Playing Poker,” but with real, stuffed animals. Then, expand your imagination, and there ya go.

Scott will wish to visit on account of the gerbil cricket match.

Rebecca (who is doubtless busy kicking ass in the greater metro Boston area and will not see my link here) will come for the toads, without a doubt. Caution, sensitive souls – my dear sweat flavored gummi’s site is NEVER work safe and frequently features a top-of-page image that is intended to offend and disgust.

Poupou will enjoy the kittens, sort of.

I myself favor the kitten with two faces or that with 8 legs and two tails.

(UPDATE: Where are my freakin’ manners? I saw this at jimfl’s Everything Burns. My apologies for having unsourced this.)

(You know what would rock in MT? A source link field.)

Allan notes a hilarious list of clueless critiques of the Lord of the Rings, constructed as satire of a fanboy nitpick list.

I laughed and laughed.

It also made me think I should offer my 2 cents on LOTR. Perhaps tomorrow. There’s a lot to say about it – more than a single essay, certainly.

One essay I will probably NOT write about here is my boundless admiration for the efficacy and beauty of the film trilogy’s astonishing marketing campaign. The sales drones over there are more than sales drones – it’s the most carefully thought-out entertainment marketing campagin I have ever heard of, let alone seen.

Every detail seems not only to be noted and accounted for but meticulously planned with an overriding strategy that, frankly, reminds me of a military campaign. Maybe the Bushies should hire Jackson’s wizards of marketing and actually listen to them.

That’s kind of an amusing contrast – one of the reasons the LOTR marketing is so effective, even globally, is that the films, Tolkien, and Peter Jackson strongly appear to have our best interests in mind as well as theirs. Think of the discomfort one experienced under that most recent Star Wars assault, for example. What’s different? We (and by we I mean I) think that Jackson and his team are doing something so special and amazing, something that transforms a cherised reading experience, often a childhood one, into a new form. It’s magic. It’s akin to faith, to religious experience, which is also why LOTR lovers (I’m one) are prone to lampoonable cultish behaviors.

Really though, it’s almost too easy to argue that Tolkein’s beautiful vision represents a myth that extols a colonial past that had failed when the book was published, among other things. I recall having my first lit-crit discussion ever with my dad on the books, having noted that they were written in the shadow of World War II and can easily be understood as an allegory of that war, (and of course more than that, but! As I said, too many essays here to write them all).

And also: goody! I can’t wait.

(Hey look! I’m back on schedule!)

Is it normal to have random people drop by with questions associated tangentially with a topic you’ve written about, but for which you have no answer?

How about for people to simply miss the point of the post altogether and develop their own interpretations of what the comments are intended for? (This one actually has a clear moral duty associated, which is, um, unexpected. I think the title leads to to misunderstanding.)

It happens here all the time. I would like to take the opportunity to both run my lovely original art again and give myself a big slap on the back! Thank you, self! Yes, I drew it!

n.b.: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS THE “SEATTLE PACIFIC ZEPPELIN AIRLINES”, although wealthy investors are encouraged to lodge inquiries with my solicitor. Idle and/or curious inquiries will be referred to Mr. Hand. A click on the inline graphic will, however, provide the idle “web-surfer” with a fully-scalable PDF, suitable for printing on your office’s large-format color printer.

The DiaryLand Diary (courtesy the good graces of tireless internet researcher poupou) of realjesus.

In the holiday season, it’s nice to remember the true meaning of Christmas, and its’ incredible usefulness as a tool of heartless, ball-peen cruelty to the humor impaired.

bakeracted! psyhce ward!

“THOU SHALT NOT BE MEAN TO JESUS IN AIM”

Ah, reading this while listening to the immortal strains of El Vez’ “Merry Mex-mas” takes me right back to those heady days of yesteryear, when South Park illuminated the true meaning of Christmas via that there newfangled internet thingy.

Just noticed blogrolling has a code change, I’ll implement it here tomorrow or Monday, I think.

Farmall Promenade: Square Dancing Tractors.

That’s great. via BoingBoing.

My mother’s family that stayed in Mizoo, near Kansas City, when her family upped stakes for Washington during the Depression – my like third cousins once removed or something – had a Farmall that I was allowed to drive the one time we visited. I was maybe eight.

It was exciting becasue I had a killer cast-iron Farmall toy – with rack and pinion steering and hard rubber tires, really excellent – when I was a wee lad. I clearly inherited it from someone, damfino who.

It was something like this one, but less elaborate. I don’t think was a licensed model but it may have been an Ertl. It was pretty old, with some paint worn off. Maybe like this? Or this, but a bit larger.

Sure wish I’d kept it. I had a really nice International Harvester cab-model, too, that was a gift from our next door neighors in Bloomington who had an IH dealership.

Interestingly, after my grandpa died, we found a stack of publicity photos from the turn of the century which were from his dad’s combine business in the Palouse – harvest equipment was too expensive for individual farms to afford, so service companies sprung up that owned and brokered access to the equipment, kept the mule teams, and paid the hands that ran the machines.

The machines were usually hauled around by mules but ran on steam, so my grandpa was both a mule skinner and a steam engineer by the time he was in his teens. One of the pictures shows both the Columbia and a locomotive and train in the far distance along the banks of the great river, on what is undoubtedly the same railbed I passed over when I moved out here on the train in 1990.

Anne Zender hipped me to a B-ton-based pub, The Pin-up, which provides arts and entertainment info in addition to running regular bits of history journalism such as Carol Krause’s recounting of attending a Dancing Cigarettes concert which also featured readings by John Giorno and William S. Burroughs in 1981 (my sometime partner in crime Bill Weaver is featured in a cameo appearance as a 21-year-old, I think); or the history of the East Asian or Indian woman who has gazed down on Kirkwood in my hometown since I can recall.

Authentic Bloomington character John Barge issued an update alert for his Wacky Hoosiers clip-o-rama celebration of the oddities that heavy corn farming can bring to the world (at Angelfire, so batten down). John notes:

“This month’s postings include:

• Libertarian Wins Office
• Hoosier Pagans
• Tex Terry, Cowboy B-Movie Star
• Soldier Patton Slapped Was From Indiana
• Cunning Hoosier Crimminal, The Midget
• Punk Rockers For Jesus

and many others!”

Uh, what else?

Carrol also has a fine reminisence of what I long thought my first riot experience, the NCAA riot in near downtown Bloomington. (This one features a cameo by my favorite boss of all time, one Paul Smedberg.)

Lessee now, I would have been, um, 15. I spent some of ’81-’82 in Switzerland. It seems unlikely my memory is reliable in this instance. I suppose I could have grafted tales from friends onto my recollection – I have memories of watching a kid climb up a fish in the Showalter Fountain and aslo seeing a scuffle behind some nearby bushes.

Krause mentions that the riot happened the same day that Reagan was shot; I think I was in town for that, since I have a clear recollection of hoping the wrinkled bastard was dead.

My friend Stacey becomes a fully-qualified adult today. I wonder if she’ll get into a kick-fight with her hubby Greg.

…and poker.

Disjointed, eh? I’ll give you disjointed.

The storm news today reminded me, as always, of April 1974.

I made some beef stew today, with the goodness of Guiness, and mm-hmmm, do it smell good!

I’ve been seduced by the wily Goldstein into a hand of Blog Poker. Thank god the pale-dry-boy is dealing and not kicking my ass, as would otherwise surely happen.

He is employing my favr’ite poker variety, which he’s not named but that I will from now on think of as New Jersey Hold ‘Em.

I’m currently showing a not-terribly-exciting 3h/4d/As/ with one down. We’re waitin’ on the flop.

UPDATE: the Flop done flupped. But it ain’t like I kin tell YEW whut I’m holdin’.

Hey tablemates! I want you all to notice me drinking heavily on the casino’s tab over heah!

hey HEy HEYYYY! Ge’me oneovv ’em uh, whatchacall, um, um, Pernod and gins. Yeahhh, thass it. And MAKE IT A DOUBLE!!

hey, got a light?

Wacky Hoosiers is an angelfire site maintained by all-around madman and personal childhood drinking buddy John Barge.

JB assiduously combs the papers of Indiana looking for evidence that our down-home home-state former cohabitants are, well, wacky.

John has a great eye for the absurd, and I’m always happy to see him update the site.

This month, he’s got an article on Hoosier fight hst Sammy Terry, the late nite B-Movie host of Channel 4’s terribly bad horror flick fest for every year in my living memory; that punkin cannon story that was making the rounds, a MUFON conference, and a disturbing image on a cereal box, among other fine offerings.

Don’t miss the scale-model Arby’s.