Kate McKinnon

Set to the tune of the Talking Heads Once In A Lifetime.

And they are a band, and they are fantastic, and they are rocking out. Who knew? I wish I was in a band.

Great news from one of the swingest of swing states.  Here are a few quotes.

Very early on, Mr. Obama reached out to his impressive corps of economic advisers and developed a comprehensive set of recommendations for addressing the problems. He set them forth calmly and explained them carefully…

…Mr. McCain, a longtime critic of government regulation, was late to recognize the threat. The chief economic adviser of his campaign initially was former Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, who had been one of the architects of banking deregulation. When the credit markets imploded, Mr. McCain lurched from one ineffectual grandstand play to another. He squandered the one clear advantage he had over Mr. Obama: experience…

…John McCain has served his country well, but in the end, he may have wanted the presidency a little too much, so much that he has sacrificed some of the principles that made him a heroic figure in war and in peace. In every way possible, he has earned the right to retire.

Read the whole thing here.

Today the boys and I had a nice surprise when we drove down today to see my Grandma. She’s been slowly slipping into senility, or Alzheimers; hard to say. And in past months, she really hasn’t remembered anything- what a dragonfly was or where she lived. But today, for whatever reason, she was sharp as a tack and we were able to talk about the past again. About the camping trips we used to take, about my Mom and Dad, about times ranging from her childhood to my own. It was an unexpected gift on a beautiful day.

Adding to the magic was a sudden rainstorm, pelting us with fleeting fury as we drove. It was on us and gone in the space of a minute.

The photo is from the great Firefly Forest blog, of a field of Arizona poppies blooming just below Madera Canyon, close to where I was today.

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Allegre sent me a link to this hilarious Wile E. Coyote snippet that reminded her of John McCain’s attacks on Obama.

Hey, would you like to pick up a set of all three of my books and a calendar for a song? What about a $50 gift certificate to use in the Shop any way you like? The auction is up for the Netroots Nation conference in 2009 (the massive gathering of progressive bloggers) and I’ve donated two sets of books and two gift certificates.

You can also bid on lunch with Wes Clark, that hot piece of man, or some Cookies of Mass Destruction, which I am currently trying to win.

Check it out!

And here is the backside of a Steller’s Jay for your trouble. Their color slays me, it’s like that moment right before twilight gives way to night, like the gleam off of that certain shade of black black skin, like the light through deep water, like the bluest blue I could imagine, like no one’s eyes I’ve ever seen.

Watch your fish, man! This is a shot of a bald eagle chasing an osprey, trying to steal a fish that the osprey just caught. From the comment section of one of lineatus’ great Birdblogs on DK.

It pains me to hear people praise him for his recent bout of common sense. This is a man who, posing as a journalist, has been writing right wing propaganda for eight years. He was the giddy cheerleader for the invasion of Iraq, and supported every lie Bush told. He was one of the loudest and most consistent Bush voices in the press, and his support (along with every vote for Bush in 2004) is partially responsible for the war, the warming planet, and the state of the economy.  Now that he is supporting Obama, all of a sudden he is some kind of hero? Forget that. I can forgive, but I’m not about to forget. As he himself writes in today’s NYT Op-Ed,

No way to deny it. The current Republican party hates intelligence and competence. It’s become a Know Nothing spectacle led by Sarah Palin. I will ignore my own years of neglect of this topic, and instead concentrate on where the GOP is heading. Neither subject, btw, is pretty.

You’ve got that right, David. It isn’t pretty. And you don’t get a pass to simply ignore the blood on your own hands and attach yourself to a better looking ship. To hell with you.

The failed tree ring, which will become a new tree ring, and another Gaudiesque building ring.

And one in a series of Coliseum rings. Some have excitements inside, some just celebrate the shape. All three pieces are in progress and will be in the Shop when finished.

I have a set of Gaudi buildings in construction right now that are blowing me away. I can’t wait to figure them out. There is certainly polymer or enamel in their future. I’ve been building setups with drinking straws and lines of glue, getting the right kind of warped planes and parabolic curves.