The Flatland Chronicles

Blogcombing "A Gentleman's Domain": The Heartbreak of Rodent Rejection

If you want to know why I'm depressed, it's because my hamster hates me.  Yes; I said it.  She HATES me.  Nicholas, my husband, explains:

We have a hamster.....  I didn’t want one, but after ceaseless bullying from my wife, and my daughter who was visiting, I caved in and they chose a Chinese dwarf hamster.  My wife was delighted.  It turns out that the hamster can’t stand my wife, who loves her, and any attempt at contact is met with full frontal attack and vicious use of her front teeth. On the other hand I, who never wanted her at all, am adored and trusted. She will take food from my fingers and lets me stroke her. My wife, meanwhile, has to suffer the trauma of rodent rejection.  (Read more of "Pet Pleasures")

Pictures from the Earth: "Cascade Mountain Range Volcanoes"

I've always been fascinated by the Pacific Northwest, but it's a long, long way away from Gainesville Florida, and when I have money to travel, it's usually got to be eastward to my husband's family home in Britain (not that I'm complaining about that).

At The Happy Wonderer, there is a marvelous photo-essay on the volcanoes of the Cascade Mountain Range I immediately decided to scoop up and add to my list of photos other people have made of things earthly and wonderful. 
The photos are from along the I-5 from Washington State (only an easterner would feel it necessary to qualify this, I'm told) to California.  "It's amazing to think that these peaks are all volcanoes," she says.

Go here to look and learn....

Blogcombing Zenmomma's Garden: "Art-O-Gasmic"

Zenmomma has a fantastic photo essay posted at Zenmomma's Garden entitled "Art-O-Mat = Art-O-Gasmic," written by guest author Jon. 

I have tried for the last five minutes to explain exactly what the essay is about, but it's a bit like trying to explain art; to experience it, you've got to see it.  Say this:  the family received as a gift a box containing a number of small but delightful works of art.  The photo-essay is essentially the story of the gift box and the opening of the gift box. 

The photographs are gorgeous (as is the writing).  Also it made me laugh out loud.

Well, except for this bit: Elizabeth King painted a Floridian palm tree and titled it Got Paradise? This piece is a kind of like a Missing Person Poster because Florida lost their paradise a long time ago."  : (   You all know that's not true, right?  I can prove it to you.   I'd refer Jon here.  You just have to look in the right direction.  There are 67 counties in Florida, Jon, and Florida includes not only the theme parks county (Orange) and related sprawl, along with a few overbuilt areas on the East Coast, but the nature coast on the west and the beautiful Panhandle. It's a big, big state.  And Miami has the problems of any urban area.  But everywhere you look anywhere else you can find paradise. 

Okay, just wanted to put that into the record!  Read "Art-O-Mat = Art-O-Gasmic." You'll love it.  I even liked the little orange block with a tree-like image painted on it. 

Blogcombing: A Passage to India? Photo Essay by Smiler

You all know how I love photo essays, right? 

Here's an amazing photo-essay about India put together by Smiler from the photographs of  Claude Renault.  I won't say any more than that.  See for yourself.....

Blogcombing: "Central Sanity"

EX-cellent. At the centrist political blog Central Sanity, one of my first political blogs, Bridget Magnus has posted a list of Headlines for the New Year.  Here's a taste:

Headline I least expect to see in 2008: Both parties realize election cycle too long; primary season designated as the April before a November election; campaigning prior to New Years Day prohibited.

Being sick to death of all the candidates---especially the ones I actually like---I can only nod and shed a tiny tear.   These gravely over-exposed people will deserve it when the whole country, in a massive revulsion over having seen and heard them too much for too long already, decides as one to write in someone no one expects, such as Unity spokesman Sam Waterston (hey, why not Sam Waterston? He's a better actor than Fred Thompson and plays a prosecutor who's tough but fair in Law and Order). 

Read more headlines.....

Pictures from the Earth: Fan Boy

The subject of this photograph is a "fan boy"  in the most literal sense of the word----i.e., he's a boy with a fan.  In Japan.  The photographer, Kamoda/Nathan Duckworth, has a blog that I highly recommend to anyone in need of visual inspiration.  I intend to blog-roll it as soon as I'm done with this:  "Daily Photos of Everyday Japan." 

This---one of my favorite Flickr Creative Commons photos ever---is one you won't want to miss:

Blogcombing "Adventures of a Serious Writer"

PBS Mind, who has written some excellent things for our very own Buck Naked Politics, has a superb post at "The Adventures of a Serious Writer (It's All About the Craft)" in which she lists 14 editing tasks.  Writers as well as editors could benefit from reading this breakdown:  Editing is a Juggling Act

Gearing Up for the New Year: A Resolution to Learn How to Do Joy? (Also: Blogcombing "Open Grove" Again, Some More)

In one of my favorite novels  (synopsis) by my favorite novelist, Ursula K. LeGuin, one of the characters----a generous and therefore a wealthy man---has a run of the sort of undeserved bad luck that makes nonsense of the notion that the universe is in any way rational.  The other characters, like Job's comforters, then turn on him because the very sight of him makes him uncomfortable.  They also conclude that perhaps he brought his bad luck on himself by being immoderately generous and kind.  How then, does one live well? he asks them.  "If I knew that I'd know everything,' one of them replies.

Blogcombing: Homage to "Altjiranga Mitjina---The Timeless Dimension of Dreams"

I love this site, so naturally I blog-rolled it.  Also naturally, I spelled it wrong....which kind of defeats the purpose.  I don't know why I have this blind spot about the name (which I love the look of, I just don't know how to pronounce it. 

The writing is superb----and it's my favorite site anywhere for music and videos.   I encountered it when we were doing a "Thursday 13" at Buck Naked Politics  (it's about time for a new one of those) and we exchanged links at that time. 

It's like....I don't know what it's like, exactly.  Invaluable miscellany?  Nuggets of incalculable value panned from the pop culture?   It's my go-to place for new experiences.   I am grappling to explain, so you'll have to look yourself.  I have found so much excellent music there since I first saw this list and fell in love with Maggie Brown's "40 dollars and Lily Holbrook's "Mama, I'm Coming Home." 

 

Blogcombing "On a Limb with Claudia": Bad Plastic Surgeries

<Get "In re: Servilia" by Damozel |  Another of my favorite blogs (as you'll see from the list on the left...) published this submission to "Thursday 13" (world's most awesome meme) several weeks ago and I just CANNOT get it out of my head: Plastic Surgery shouldn’ts.   

"Ok, I’m a native California," the note begins.  "In fact, I’m a fourth generation native Californian. Which is to say that I have seen a lot of plastic surgery in my life. Hell, there’s a woman who claims to have raised me but I don’t recognize her… at all."  This is one of the most awesome openings of an Thursday 13 post ever.