Chilly Chihuahua Loves the Heating Pad

 Jack our 6 pound Chihuahua mix is so chilly. He is always snuggling under something or someone trying to get warm. The other day I accidently left the heating pad on and Jack discovered his new favorite spot.

Coolest Kid’s Costumes 2012

Frida Kahlo

Vincent Van Gogh

Andy Warhol

Demon

OWS person



Wilson



Boss Hog

Person with their head in a jar



Clock Work Orange Droogs



Johnny Cash

Generic Super Heroes



A  very surprised chicken killed by a vampire slayer?



Creepy Mr. T

Lolita meets Oscar the Grouch

Homeless man

Pole Dancer

Bethany Hamilton & Shark

A Centaur & cross dressing Thoth?

Turtle



Colonel Sanders




Hannibal Lecter



Ron Jeremy?

NYC from Android Pt 2

I am back...

This new set up is not conducive to thoughts lasting longer than 30 seconds.  People always think it is quieter here and sympathetically ask me if I get bored or lonely. Well I do get bored, but I am never lonely. There seems to be a nonstop stream of passersby that want to chat and the phone only stops ringing long enough for me to get nothing done. I also feel more exposed, front and center. My desk is much smaller and poorly laid out, it's claustrophobic in fact, and my left side is always sore, because the way I have to lean over to answer the phone. Plus there is a constant battle for dominance between Ursula & me. In our old space I let her have it, I didn’t care, there was enough room for both of us. Not here, here there is hardly enough room for one of us. So every day we rearrange the desk and she whines and I care less…

This is the reason my blog has been suffering. 

 I am back today to complain (done) and then to mention a really interesting but disheartening documentary I watched yesterday The Trials Of Henry Kissinger

The highlights:

·         Kissinger intentionally extended the Vietnam war in 1968 in order to defeat Herbert Humphrey and bring Richard Nixon to power, thereby, causing the war to last four more years

·         He aided the Pakistani government attempts at genocide in Indonesia

·         He tried to depose a democratically elected leader in Chile, assassinated those who tried to stop him

·         He contributed substantially to the killing fields of Cambodia

It is sad that behavior like that is the norm, a necessary evil.

Richard Nixon is thought of as the devil because of Watergate, but what he did with Kissinger in Vietnam is so much worse and no one talks about it.

I just wish there were some good guys, but I guess they wouldn’t be in power for long. And I would rather live in America then Cambodia, Indonesia, or Pakistan…still at the end of the day it all seems so wrong, dirty…and hopeless.

Happy Monday!

Top five reasons going back to work after a vacation sucks

5. Having to wake up early

4. Not getting to do whatever you want whenever you want

3. No afternoon nap

2. Same reason it sucked before …it’s work

1. You’re not on vacation anymore

Nantucket from my Android

Whaling in Nantucket

Nantucket and Whaling For more than a century, between 1750 and 1850, the headquarters of the global oil business was a small island named Nantucket, twenty-four miles off the coast of Southern New England. The Nantucket whalers were the acknowledged world leaders, the masters of the hunt for the spermaceti whale. Many whaleboats were struck by Sperm whales resulting in the deaths of hundreds of whalers. Most other ports at the time refused to hunt the Spermaceti whale, as it was too dangerous, but the perils of whaling had given the men from Nantucket a high tolerance for danger and suffering.

 In July of 1819, the Essex was one of a fleet of more than seventy Nantucket whaleships in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. With whale oil prices steadily climbing and the rest of the world's economy sunk in depression, the village of Nantucket was on its way to becoming one of the richest towns in America.

 The Nantucket Whaling Museum is housed in one of the 35 candle factories that used to thrive on the spermaceti industry in the 17 and 1800's. The candles derived from Sperm whales were said to have burned longer and brighter than any in the world. Today the whaling museum has one of the world's greatest collections of whaling equipment, scrimshaw and artifacts. Perhaps the most impressive display residing in the hallowed halls of the museum is the 18 foot jaw bone taken from a bull estimated to have been nearly 80 feet long, slightly smaller than the whale that sunk the Essex. It was Herman Melville who made the most enduring use of the Essex story. However, at the time Moby Dick proved to be a critical and financial disappointment. Melville traveled to Nantucket to visit Captain Pollard who by now had captained and lost a second whaleship and was a lowly night watchman.

Melville stayed at the Ocean House on the corner of Centre and Broad streets diagonally across from the home of George Pollard.
Melville wrote of the Essex's Captain,

"To the islanders he was a nobody - to me, the most impressive man, tho' wholly unassuming even humble that I ever encountered."

Spermaceti

Spermaceti (from Greek sperma, seed, and Latin cetus, whale) is a wax present in the head cavities of the sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus). Originally mistaken for the whales' sperm (hence the name), spermaceti is created in the spermaceti organ inside the whale's head and connected to its nasal passage. Its biological function is to control buoyancy. The sperm whale is capable of heating the spermaceti so that it melts to form a liquid which allows the whale to float. In order for the whale to sink down again it must take water into its blowhole which cools the spermaceti into a more dense solid allowing the whale to sink.

Spermaceti is extracted from sperm oil by crystallisation at 6 °C (43 °F), when treated by pressure and a chemical solution of caustic alkali. Spermaceti forms brilliant white crystals that are hard but oily to the touch, and are devoid of taste or smell, making it very useful as an ingredient in cosmetics, leatherworking, and lubricants. The substance was also used in making candles of a standard photometric value, in the dressing of fabrics, and as a pharmaceutical excipient, especially in cerates and ointments. The candlepower was a photometric unit defined in the English Metropolitan Gas Act 1860 and adopted at the International Electrotechnical Conference of 1883. It depended upon a standardised pure spermaceti candle.

Nantucket Sleigh Ride, late 1800s

An angry whale might tow a whaleboat for miles before it tired. Exciting but dangerous, these “Nantucket sleigh rides” were named for the birthplace of the New England whaling industry. A whale sometimes smashed or overturned a boat during the chase, and few crewmen knew how to swim. The whale pictured here cannot go much farther. Blood in its air spout indicates a mortal wound in the lungs.