One Down...

Thank Dis Pater It's Friday!

"If you want to raise Hell, consult an expert."

Winners and Losers

From the afternoon "junior varsity" gathering of Republican candidates:

Carly Fiorina wasn't even as good as I have seen her do before, and she still clearly gave the best performance. If she isn't with the first-tier candidates next time around Fox News needs to revamp their formula.

Rick Perry and Bobby Jindal were also fine, and deserve to be in the main group, but we'll see if tonight was able to bump their poll numbers any, and get them into The Show.



Jim Gilmore, Lindsey Graham, George Pataki, and Rick Santorum shouldn't have entered the race in the first place. None of them has a plausible path to the nomination, and the sooner they drop out the sooner voters can begin to focus on the candidates who matter. Sorry, guys (but not that sorry).

As far as the evening portion of the festivities was concerned:

The most basic question I ask myself when watching these "cattle call" shows is: "Did you see a president on that stage tonight?"

The only unequivocal "Yes" for me was Marco Rubio. The more the voters learn about him, the better he will do. And Hillary is probably terrified at the thought of having to face him in the general...




I still need to see more, but I was also impressed by:

Dr. Ben Carson

Ted Cruz

 Scott Walker

Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee (again? really?), and John Kasich were okay, under the circumstances, but I'm not looking for "okay" at this point in the cycle.

The Biggest Losers of the Night in the evening portion of the program were Rand Paul (who looked irritated and a little desperate), Jeb Bush (who did absolutely nothing to dispel conservative concerns about him, and seemed to think the whole exercise was beneath him), and Donald Trump (who definitely thought the whole exercise was beneath him, and who behaved like the vain, arrogant asshat that he is). Of course, all of the websites hosting open online polls were swamped with Trumpkins, and the resulting clickbait stories about Trump "winning" are just the sort of thing those websites were hoping for. Such results are about as convincing as Omar Infante leading the All-Star voting at second base for much of the summer. (Sorry, Omar. You know I love you, but come on...)

Wild Kingdom Bed & Breakfast Update

Over the past few days, I have been trying an experiment where I sit on my patio during peak feeding times, hoping to convince my avian customers that they can still drop in for a snack without fear.

So far, I haven't had any trouble getting a least one or two of them at a time to tolerate me sitting so close, and they don't seem to mind my talking to them while they're eating, but I have had a problem getting photographic proof. I haven't been able to get either my Nikon Coolpix or my Moto X into position to take pictures without spooking them, but yesterday I tried using my Nexus 7 instead, and...

"What is that thing you're pointing at us?"

Sorry, I don't mean to be rude...but you'll have to get used to having me around sometimes, guys.

Speaking of My Coffee Mug Collection...

...I added to it yesterday when I won an eBay auction for this beauty:

It is inspired by the famous Edward Hopper painting Nighthawks...

...except the diner is now a Starbucks. I'm quite fond of the Hopper painting (a print of it currently hangs in my dining room). The mug was issued in 1995, and is part of a special collection I'm putting together. This is the first acquisition for that project, so I'm pretty pleased to have found it. I love eBay.

One Upside to a Down Economy

From the delightful comic strip Non Sequitur, by Wiley Miller, which you should read every day (even though he's a squishy liberal).

Until Next Time...

A fair amount of the music that has been meaningful in my life falls into the Guilty Pleasures category. That is, stuff I really like but have a difficult time explaining to other people. You can't really understand me unless you understand my fondness for such music.

Thirty-four years ago, a classic guilty pleasure popped up on summer radio: A power pop single called "Our Lips Are Sealed," by the all-female band The Go-Gos. Today's send-off is the music video that accompanied the single's release (they timed their release well, as music video channel MTV launched on August 1, 1981, and this video was an early fan favorite). Enjoy...