MONDAY #2333

One Of My Very Own...

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Ladies and gentlemen, we are one giant step closer to designer babies.

And a related headline...

Strippers Are Now Banned From Funerals By The Chinese Government

Coincidence? I think not.
And why, you ask, would anyone want to invite strippers to a funeral? This is what my extensive research has revealed:

The point of inviting strippers, some of whom performed with snakes, was to attract large crowds to the deceased’s funeral – seen as a harbinger of good fortune in the afterlife. “It’s to give them face,” one villager explained. “Otherwise no one would come."

For the record, I am completely in favor of strippers at every funeral in the world. I think the government should fund said strippers for the funerals of poor people, but really rich people should have so many strippers that they spill out onto the street and down the block.

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The mighty wanderer's final image...

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Nepal's remarkable landscape...

And that, Gentle Reader, is why people want to own land. Your great-great-great-great-grandfather started it and every generation added a terrace or two. And that makes it yours.
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These are the private jets prior to the big fight...

My money was on Mayweather, so at least I have that going for me. It's hard to bet against a man who has never lost a fight.

Music to scroll by:

Iceland has no mosquitoes at all. Not even one.

Is that true?

Something I never thought too much about...

Exercising for just 10 minutes a day raises your risk of posting inspirational quotes by 60%.

What a wonderful device...

Man selling mummies in Egypt, 1875.

What I lack in money I make up for in body fat.

Guilin National Park, China

 And I've spent half my life trying to teach children that real mountains don't look like that.

Oh, the joy...

X-47B drone became the first ever unmanned aircraft to refuel while in the air.

Technically this shows "above-ground woody biomass," but in practical terms it is a map of tree density. 

What amazed me was the lack of trees along the Mississippi River flood plain.

Then I got to thinking...how many other great stories are there about trees.

Well, last week authorities in Japan cut down a pine tree at Rikuzentakata in a bid to preserve it. The tree had been part of a coastal forest, but was the only one left standing after the tsunami struck the country. It will be cut into sections, given anti-decay treatment, reassembled using a carbon spine, and replanted in the same spot. 

 The whole process could take around six months. When I read that description of this pine, I was reminded of the (in)famous quote from the Vietnam war.  I suppose I understand the logic behind the process — the tree is being preserved as a monument of an event rather than as a tribute to itself.  Still...

And this is called the bloodwood tree for rather straightforward reasons...

This is the Queen Elizabeth Oak.

Legend has it that the future Queen Elizabeth was sat under this tree, eating an apple, when she was told that her sister Mary had died, and she was the new monarch. Bless her heart.

This is a previously posted image that looks very much like a painting but is, in fact, a photograph...

They are camel thorn trees in Namibia. At the rising of the sun, the light falls on the orange dunes to produce the effect above.

Then there is this old mystery...

From an article:

 I get the sense that this forest is a tree farm, because of the uniformity of age of the trees, and I suspect this is a man-made curvature, because of the similarity of all the trees involved.  If that's true, then my best explanation would be that these trees were trained as "compass timbers" for shipbuilding or as material for other woodworking.

And they are not next to a large lake...

 They thought that they were curved on purpose to make such things as these...

Curving trees is a rather easy thing to do if you start while they are young.

But the whole having curved wood thing bothers me. All you have to do is steam wood, bend it to whatever curve you want and let it dry. It will stay in that shape forever.

I get so excited every time I see an armored car but then, guess what, no heist.

Every day I try to use the phrase ‘upside your head’ at least once.

 This is my exact expression and words when my wife seems indifferent to my Green Bay Packer's loss...

Homo Erectus Hunting Party

 At some point they stopped just scavenging and began to hunt in organized groups. These fossilized foot prints are the earliest to show just such a group.

Two cows in a field. One says, “Moo.” The other on says, “Damn, I was going to say that!”

This man needed a lifeline for this...

I actually don't really hate anybody at all except for Oprah, VP Chenney, Joffrey, and the mom from the Berenstain Bears.

 I wonder how many people, finding themselves flying through space, would have as their first thought, 'This was all made for me.'

I never see something like this without thinking of the article that said you should never let the horse eat with a bridle on...

And as you see, his has been removed. 

I am so sorry that I am unaware of where this is or who did it...

I always look at people I don’t know like they are my son telling me they want to ride unicycles professionally.

I'm sorry I missed that. 

Widsom...

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the Ku Klux Klan, but the white moderate. MLK

Women have a love/hate relationship with the hair on their body.

Hair, to a woman, is the ugliest of body growths, unless it sprouts from the head and the eyelid. Women spend hours fucking with their eyelashes. They buy special tools just to curl those tiny little hairs. Then they are caked with some black goo that looks just as natural as black goo on hair sounds.


There is no doubt that women would shave like a man if the need arose, but here I have to take a defensive stance. Men, normally self confident and in control, feel compelled to shave every single morning...like a ritual. I don't understand such a ridiculous practice, but I guess some men never learned to love themselves as I have learned to adore what I was born with.

The loathing of normal, natural body hair includes a small patch that sprouts from the armpit. Women who dare leave this patch unmolested are shunned by almost all of American societies...from the richest to the most needy.

I have been very intimate with women...European women, who had armpit hair and it never really bothered me.

Women think leg hair is a sign of a weak mind.

...unless they can hide it.

Most of the natural hair on a woman's body is under assault. They hate hair and spend a great amount of time and money removing all evidence of it.

The exception is the hair on their head. There seems to be NOTHING a woman won't do to her head hair. They wash it so often that they remove all natural oils, then they have to apply artificial rinse just to be able to get a comb through it. But the love/hate is so confusing as to be difficult to discuss. They seem to hate everything about their hair and always want it to look like somebody else's.
If it is straight, they want to curl it.

If it's curly, they want to straighten it.

And no matter what color it is, that color has to be changed.

And just like every other aspect of a woman's life, they don't seem to think for themselves. They seem compelled to follow the herd with hair styles also.

I feel completely confident that if the magazines mandated it, every women in America would do whatever the leading edge told them to do.

As for gray hair, there can be no greater sin than to show gray hair....aging must be masked at all costs.

If you will, just for a moment, think of all the bottles and jars you have in your home that are dedicated for doing this or that to your hair. I've read the labels and...laughed. There seems to be no fruit that a woman won't apply to her hair...or at least that's what the label said. But you know, and I know that the shampoo does not contain mangoes or papaya or whatever.

NAILS

I don't mind adornment. I'm an artist for god's sake and visual stimulation is what I'm all about.

I've even painted some of my nails before.

I'm not so much disappointed in the adornment...

I am disappointed that a change in style is announced (mandated) and IMMEDIATELY every woman in America goes from rounded nails to squared off nails.

I do have problems with people who can't afford health insurance spending hundreds of dollars on a new nail job.

If you have nails like this, your girlfriends may think they are beautiful, but people like me are laughing at you.

The reason I laugh is picturing her wiping her ass without drawing blood. That woman doesn't deserve to make the same money as a man.

I have received comments from several people concerning why women make less money than men. One of them from a sensitive young man who, more or less, said none of the stupid shit women do is their fault; it is society's fault for demanding that women do crazy shit. Well, I disagree. Women were not talked into shaving every hair on their body by "society". They were talked into it by the companies that sell the razors, shavers, creams, etc. The same for hair dyes, eye enhancers, etc, etc, etc. And that's just my point. There seems to be no end to what women can't be talked into by a well written advertisement. And it is that ease of manipulation that bodes poorly for equal pay.