Random Images from Around the Internets...and More...

I am a sort of beady-eyed packrat of the Internets, scampering about with my whiskery nose all a-twitch finding images I like; some pretty, some odd, others awful, but shiny and glittery to my rodent mind and dragging them into my midden of a folder on the laptop. Every so often I paw through them, muttering "Preciousssss...my preciousss."

I figured it was time to dump out the picture folder and give you a look.

Let's start with this one: it's a hat.



Well. Shit.I knew we'd overlooked something in the pre-Cana counseling. How do we explain Mom's execution to the kids..?

Ah.Very few actresses - very few women, I daresay - managed the insouciant charm of Audrey Hepburn.

This lovely graphic is by someone called "Phobs", whose page over at deviantart has some gorgeous and fascinating - and some truly disturbing - stuff in it.This is a part of an image that I believe is meant to represent Poland in the 1940s, but looks to me more like the story of St. Elizabeth of Hungary and the roses. Do you know the story?

Well, St. Elizabeth, then merely Elizabeth of Thuringa, was taking bread to the poor, in contravention of her stern husband's orders. He suspected her secret charity, and had her watched, but could not catch her in the act of largesse. Finally he managed to apprehend her coming from the castle bakery; he halted her, frowning down at her full apron from which the smell of fresh-baked bread emanated like a good deed in a sinful world.

"What have you there, woman?" he rasped. She replied; "I have been in the garden, lord, and I have cut the roses for my chamber."

"Roses!? Let me see them, these...roses...then." he sneered.

So Elizabeth slowly opened her apron...and the roses tumbled out, spilling down her dress and across the paving stones red as, well, as roses; fragrence sweet as love, blooming fresh as life, petals soft as a kiss.

(Wasn't true, mind you; they tell the same story about some saint in Portugal, and as far as we know Elizabeth's husband was all in favor of her charity.)

But it's a wonderful little story, isn't it?

Your National Guard - the Modern Minuteman; Defender of the Homeland, Bulwark of Democracy......circa 1992. Try and find the fire direction chief in the middle of this elite strike force. Ahem.

Yikes.Just...yikes.

Yeah, I know, I haven't forgotten the Rape of Nanking, either. But if you have a moment check these fascinating images of Bakumatsu and Meiji Japan of the 1890s and early 1900s......by enigmatic photog Enami Nobukuni. Intriguing glimpses of a world in some ways as vanished as Knossos or Technoctitlan.

Anybody else love "A Hole Is To Dig"?One of my favorite books from my childhood - a kids book that I actually loved as a kid.


Well, THAT explains a lot...
"Called the “Nice Cup In Bra,” the lingerie consists of a grass-green top that, when removed, conveniently unfurls into a 1.5-meter-long putting mat."When the user sinks a putt into one of the cups, a built-in speaker pumps out a cry of “Nice shot.”I know that Japan is a very different culture and all, and that the Japanese have their own ideals of value, but this is...is...it just makes me glad I don't golf.

Is this cool, or what?Apparently it is, or is going to be, called an "asperatus" cloud, a type of cumulus congestus (I think). Scary looking, neh?

Oh, yah, fail.Yes, I play videogames with my son.

But not "Grand Theft Auto".
Found this one at The Bins.I've been reading this on the can and enjoying Fr. Kelly's advice.

My personal fave was his suggestion on your basic can't-miss method of selecting a bride: "There is much to be said for the wisdom of the man who laid a broom across his threshold; the first four women who entered stepped over it. The fifth picked it up, and he married her."

Father, forgive me, but...WTF???

Ooh. Epic fail.Came across this one sorting out old photo albums.This is from some damn miniature golf place on the Jersey shore about 20 years ago. That's me on the right with She Who Is Always Known As Pre-Mommy. Kind of sad, this being the highlight of the vacations the six of us used to take in that time. The other truly screwy thing is that all three couples (the husband of the woman on the left is taking the snapshot) are now divorced. Bad luck coming in threes? Poor premarital counseling? Men are assholes?

Who knows.

Odd, nonetheless.

Hmmm. I've heard it said that everything is sexier in Paris.Seems to be the case.

Bye, now.