Taleb speaks of the “anti-library”.
What a wonderful notion, the idea that one’s prodigious collection of unread books constitutes evidence of that which a person is aware he does not know, at least with great specificity — a form of knowledge in itself, arguably. Thus, the metes and bounds of a monkey’s ignorance take on a tangible and ironically useful physical manifestation.
This has been a busy and simultaneously lazy time for all of us. And it is summer. It is difficult to pin down anyone this time of year, except for the insane, so roll with the gift hiatus or seasonal windfall, if you will, from the ordinary regular distractions.
Clear some space to think. Don’t worry. More clutter will take its place soon enough.
Zulu Kilo 
bunn! I’m so excited that you talked Holmes into another portrait of you and Mimi–it’s going out to the E clan momentarily. Question: Are you OK? Your grayish rings look very black in the photo. And is Holmes making sure Pierson knows exactly how godlike you are?
EE, thanks. Never let it be said that I wasn’t willing to prostitute myself to gain readership. As Taleb would say, this stuff scales!
As to the dark band, I think it’s a trick of the light. Let me assure you: I remain fat, glossy and fit as a fiddle with no discernible changes to coloration.
Hello, E Clan!
EE, check your e-mail.
Nice looking pair of crumb snatchers. And wall to wall carpeting. Something tells me these two have it made in the shade.
well, i’d say something like it dosen’t matter what monkeys know or don’t know. all that matters is that they be trained to responde on cue, reliably, i think.
of course, i’d beconsidered racist, and rightly so, if i was to point out that black and white muscians approach jazz improvisation from completely different perspectives. do they even know it? of course not, fucking stupid monkeys. orientals are incapable of such improvisation; if that’s what you call it, i think.
If you had to say (one or the other) who is closer to having a white improvisation style (or approach), Davis or Coltrane, which would you pick? This is a serious question.
seriously? i don’t know how to answer that question. i think that they were both virtuoso mucisians. i think that they both parlayed thier talents into into plenty of fine white women and good drugs; wich are the two most important things in life, just ask any jazz mucisian worth his chops. i think that miles davis lived long enough to exploit his fame and produce a bunch of shit. j coltrane’s life was cut short somehow.
if i had to pick a favorite between the 2, i’d have to pick coltrane, for no good reason.
Damned shame what happened to Massa. I thought they said he was going to be OK, but now its not so clear.
Yeah, from what I’ve heard played by those cats, I prefer Coltrane’s music as well. In any case, I need to go back and listen to Giant Steps as soon as I can.
Okay, I see what happened to Massa. A spring shot off one of the Braun cars and into his helmet, causing him to crash. Now he’s in the hospital with a fractured skull. You hear so much talk about how safe the sport is now, and it is much safer, but with those open cockpits obviously there’s always gong to be that vulnerability to random debris flying about. Massa, we hope you make it back amigo.
Oh sorry bb, I meant to drop in a link with my comment.
Thanks, bunn!! Am waiting for MOU to surface and start cooing–I will attempt to remain aloof but watchful. ; ^ ]
The only good thing about the Stones version of “Going to a Go-Go” was Mick Jagger prancing around shaking his butt at the audience. It saved us from having the full frontal version. Yikes!! And gravity has not been that man’s friend.
Let’s move into the eighties.
Is it Jazz? Crunchy guitars, for sure. Krank it up, too.
Mick turned 66 today.
I have a new cat I have fallen in love with. A friend of mine who believes in reincarnation told me that he heard that the luckiest humans come back as cats who go to homes where they are genuinely loved. It would seem the story is true of bunnies as well.
Soooo cute, OMG. Both bunnies are a-dore-a-bull!!!
I can’t disappoint EE now can I?
Mick’s bunnbunns, don’t know if they went to a good home or not.
well, how many big assed hoes does steve tibbet have? that’s the only true measure of musical talent.
Hey… if you can’t dance on your birthday, when can you dance?
MOU, if your new cat wants its 15 minutes of (ZK pictorial) fame, we can make it happen. Like the President says, “This is not about me.”
MOU, there are moron cats alive today than in all of cat history, so there goes the logic to reincarnation.
Even if humans are doing the crossover….nice story though.
@ Johnny Rico,
Whom do you detest moron, BHO or JHK? I think I know a set up when I read it.
i have a polydactyl cat who is fast becoming my favorite creature on earth. if there is a way for me to upload some pictures of him, i will.
here ya go.
That made my day… freaking brilliant. Hemingway kitty and dave.
Nice. Those cats look healthy. You growing potatoes in your gutters?
dave, great photos! judging by the forest in the background, you will never starve there, with the coons and the squirrels, and no, i don’t mean the homo neighbors, and i meant homo sapians, not homos as in gays, you know what i mean, oh nevermind.
hemingway kitty? do the hemingways have extra digits?
not sure what that is growing in the gutter. i mostly just let shit grow where it wants to. jhoon rhee mostly takes care of the gardens.
that forrest ends a couple of hundred feet back.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polydactyl_cat
[Excerpt]
Nobel Prize-winning author Ernest Hemingway was one of the more famous lovers of polydactyl cats, after being first given a six-toed cat by a ship’s captain. Upon Hemingway’s death in 1961, his former home in Key West, Florida, became a museum and a home for his cats, and it currently houses approximately fifty descendants of his cats (about half of which are polydactyl). Because of his love for these animals, Hemingway cat, or simply Hemingway, is a slang term which has come to describe polydactyls…
Other nicknames include “boxers” or “boxing cats”, “mitten cats”, “thumb cats”, “six-finger cats”, “Boston Thumb Cats”, “Cardi-cats” and “double-pawed cats” (a misnomer since there is a specific double paw condition, although they may be interrelated).[2]
American Polydactyl Cats are also being bred as a specific cat breed, with specific physical and behavioral characteristics in addition to extra digits.[5] A particular strain native to Ithaca, New York, is known as the “Ithacats”.
i’ve only had roscoe for about a month; but i can see why hemingway would be attracted to these animals. he has a constantly pleasant demeanor and is about the most aggressive hunter i’ve ever known, roscoe that is.
You might want to keep Roscoe inside at night, lest he himself become a meal for an even more aggressive hunter. Just sayin’.
“…It will eat small prey such as insects or larger prey including cats…”
http://www.holdenarb.org/resources/Greathornedowl.asp
and during the day as well: “…Other studies have found that approximately 13% of a coyote’s diet consists of cats.”
http://www.abcbirds.org/newsandreports/releases/090702.html
But then I’m sure Roscoe understands the risks already.
GB is exceedingly correct. My husband lost his cat Boo (his girl’s named it, then went to college and left it) to a Boxer. I heard sounds at 4:00 am outside and I went to investigate. The damn thing had already killed her (I did not know for sure, knew someone needed a vet, that’s all) and he saw me coming and started for me. I locked eyes with that fucker. I felt awful going back in the house, like a coward. Whoever was hurt out there needed me now. I got my gun and woke my husband. Sure enough, Boo’s broken dead body was on the neighbor’s grass. I wanted to kill that dog so bad, I went up and down the block, with the gun– no dog. Called all kinds of animal control. They could give a shit. Called the cops. They sent a car. The cop told me that while it is not legal for me to shoot that dog, that he certainly would have believed me if I said I felt threatened, given the dead cat on the lawn and all. He told me he’d of capped it if he was me.
My husband cried off an on all day that day. Could not go in to work. Had that cat 9 years. She was such a fucking bitch. Scratched, hissed, she and I could barely stand each other. No matter. She came with the husband. I fed her and cared for her at a distance. But he loved her. They would “play fight” constantly, my hubby was always sporting her scratches and grinning about it. He was too rough with her which is why she was such a bitch. But she loved him too, slept on him with her big fat fluffy self. She was really pretty with long fur, black and white tuxedo pattern, and bright vicious green eyes. What a lady.
Aaany way, story gets weirder. We are members of a neighborhood group and we put out an email about the dog. Turns out another neighbor had found a dog– a boxer. Brought the dog by on their way to take it to the vet. They were trying to find the dog’s owner. They knew for a fact that the dog had been hanging around a bridge for two days, unfed, evading captors. That bridge is half a block from my house. Get this, I pet the dog. Really sweet. He was “probably” the same dog but I will never know for sure. Looked up the breed. They are bred to chase small things that run from them. Your home insurance goes up if you have a Doberman, German Shepard, Husky, Pit Bull, or….a Boxer.
The point? If I’d shot “that dog” and I would have been wrong. Not the dog’s fault. It was away from its owner, hungry, and exposed to a stimuli that it was bred to respond to. Nature just is.
The good news is that my new cat is awesome. He too has a wonderful disposition (ain’t scared of much, not even a vacuum cleaner), is smart, and I may get rid of pest control cause, well, he is something to watch! I feel like shit about keeping our new cat indoors, but there are too many packs of dogs roaming the neighborhoods killing cats.
Be careful with your furry friends. I am wondering about a compromise, let him out in the day, bring him in at night. I just don’t know…
yeah, roscoe’s a hunter; he knows the score.
i’d miss him; but would he miss me?
boo sounds like fatty. she probably deserved what she got; but don’t we all?
My husband said about Boo, she died like she lived, fierce. I have no doubt, based on the sounds I heard, that she was right up in that dog’s face. She was like that, a bitch.
She probably deserved it, in a way of looking at it. Still, she was family.
RIP Boo.
BTW Roscoe looks pretty cool, laid back. Nice stairs shot.
ya, most of my family are assholes; they’ve all died like assholes anyway. still, they are family; i can’t argue with that.
can’t think of any that got torn up by a dog though. maybe i can grab one of my little cousins and lock him in cellar full of pit bulls that are being trained as fighting dogs. yeah, that’s the ticket; bet i could even get paid for providing a training dummy or something. you know, dress him up as a poodle first. thanks for the idea mou.
if he punches and kicks and fights for his life, he will have died fiercely. this is despite the fact he would have lived his entire life as an asshole. legends are made of this stuff. no, really, they are.
it’s alike a lot of people say to me: boy, your brother g*****e is a real asshole. all i can say is: yeah, that might be true, but he’s my asshole.
that’s afigure of speach. he’s not litterally my “asshole”. i know the difference ya know.
As it has been said for many years, “opinions are like assholes, everybody’s got one”….
dave-
Speaking of opinions, if I were Fatty and you were holding me as depicted in your posting, you would have more than your arm to worry about. Just sayin.
Not to mention, the riding gloves on fur…. as soothing as flypaper on pubic hair.
As it has been said for many years, “opinions are like assholes, everybody’s got one”….
can’t much argue with that, wouldn’t even try.
Speaking of opinions, if I were Fatty and you were holding me as depicted in your posting, you would have more than your arm to worry about. Just sayin.
no unnerstan.
Not to mention, the riding gloves on fur…. as soothing as flypaper on pubic hair.
no, you’re completely wrong on that one.
Here is my contribution to the pet post. I used to have an old coon hound named Lucky (it was already her given name). I was not looking for a pet dog but I happened onto her when she was a pup, and circumstances assigned her to me. I got her when I was visiting the Rev. Howard Finster. You might know who he is. He was a folk artist from rural Georgia and is perhaps most remembered in the mainstream for his design of the album covers for Talking Heads – “Little Creatures”; and, R.E.M. – “Reckoning”. He was a bit nutty but I liked his artwork. Google his name if you want to see many pics. He has since died.
So this dog follows me around the whole time I’m at the house and they said that they were going to take her to the shelter because they could not care for her. I don’t know why I offered to take her home. According to Finster she was the only pup in the litter to survive Parvo, so that’s why they named her Lucky. She was the dumbest dog I have ever known. Dumb as a rock. Probably mentally disabled in some way. But over 14 years she and I lived in a kind of peaceful coexistence. She was like an article of porch furniture. Classic southern porch dog. Tall, lanky and weighed about 120 lbs. But I liked her because she minded her own business. She lived in the shed, never came in the house. I made her a stable out there. I always made sure it was clean. She always had fresh straw bedding and a square meal, so I did my part. When I got married my wife tried to turn Lucky into a family house dog but Lucky didn’t give a shit about that.
There were several times that she laid in the grass out in our pasture, unmoving, and for so long (all day) that I would think she might be dead. But eventually after many hours she would get up and walk away. She was lazy but she had her coon hound instincts. Over the years she killed three coons, including one old gray-haired coon that had evaded her for years. She eventually got him. His old age caught up with him before hers did. She also killed a few opossums, a cat, a wood rat, an armadillo, and other stuff. She used to catch baby turtles. She had a big mouth and she would just go around and suck on them like a piece of candy. I would take them out of her mouth and let them go (unharmed but very clean). One time she ate a whole nest of baby wrens. That was the only time she pissed me off. The other times I didn’t care.
She dug holes half way to China. Several times she dug holes so deep she would get stuck headfirst, and I would eventually notice she was missing, and would go and pull her out. Finally, one day she dug so far under an old tree stump that it collapsed down on her and injured her badly. She was already suffering from old age and displasia. I had to euthanize her because her back end was really fucked up. I buried her next to where I buried the old coon. I carved “Lucky” on a chunk of limestone and as far as I know it still marks the spot, but I don’t know because I sold the property.
Bif-
I hope you’re keeping all your postings safe in some kind of backup drive somewhere. Let me know if you want an editor some day.
Thanks EE.
No, no save.
Super story, Bif! (It was good exercise lifting Lucky into your car, ehh?)
EE, don’t believe him, Bif’s way too clever not to save this stuff.
one time i had this really stupid dog, named it skippy, no less. so anyway i tired of that dog’s stupidity so i tied it to the front porch and called the dog warden; told him that i had found a stray and that he should come and get it. so he came and got skippy and i never saw him again, skippy that is, or the dog warden for that matter.
For a time, neighborhood cats had a way of disappearing in my next-door neighbor’s garden. I think its because he sometimes used conibear traps which were set for woodchucks. Woodchucks are a voracious eaters and a serious threat to a garden. The traps are set over chuck holes or openings through a fence surrounding the garden. Sometimes Kitty is just too darn curious. Paying attention Roscoe?
Damn nice dog story, Bif.
ya, i don’t worry too much; roscoe seems to have a couple of different techniques worked out. he dosen’t need to go looking too much for prey; that dosen’t mean he won’t of course.
he waits under a bush next to a patch of lawn. any sparrow that gets within 5 feet, one less sparrow.
he waits next to a hole that leads under the garage, it’s a passageway for rodents. they almost have to go that way, or face a long detour. he must average 2 mice a day.
i had a squirrel problem. i got rid of a bunch, but there were still some hold outs. when roscoe first arrived he would go out and sun himself in the driveway. squirrels would line up on the ridge of the garage roof and start yelling at him; you know how squirrels do that. anyhoo, it seems like the squirrles figured the score and have gone to someone else’s pears to steal.
well bif, that is a nice story. i was intimidated by the length, but i finally plowed through, 4 paragraphs.
well, have to go change dad’s diaper. he shit himself while watching the history channel, something about pearl harbor. what a bunch of shit.
LOL! Stop dave you’re killing me! Mom’s been making it to the pot lately. Her stools are solid again. I think its all the vegetables I feed her.
my contribution to the pets thread: Why email was invented
This video reminds me of an incident we had with the US Postal Service regarding our family (actually, my older sister’s) poodle. It was a miniature, white curly fur, with papers. My sister spoiled it rotten trying to make it into a combo lap dog and surrogate baby (before she had kids). I still wanna puke to this day, watching that degradation. The dog was rather smart and got along well with all people, including total strangers. I used to joke that if we were ever broken into, “Bo” would probably beg to get hand licks from the perps.
It did have this one thaing, and that was to attempt terrifying the mail carrier. Probably out of boredom at first, then it became a bad habit. I think the loud clank sound of the mailbox closing must have set the dog off. We had this heavy wooden screen door on the front entrance, next to the mailbox on the outside of the house. In those days, we sometimes didn’t bother locking it. The mail carrier would come up, deliver the mail, then Bo would race to the door, barking loudly, and slam the screen door with his body, expecting it to be locked.
Of course one day it wasn’t locked and the stupid dog hit the door so hard it flies open, startling the poor mail carrier. The next day dad gets an official notice from the Post Office. It says that unless the dog is contained, in the future our mail service will cease and we will have to drive across town to the PO for our mail. That dog might as well have been kissed by the God Father.
So dad talks to the mail carrier, promises to keep the screen door locked at all times and assures him the dog is all bark, no bite. Fortunately for Bo, we got our mail service restored and he lived to be given away to a stud farm where he fucked female poodles for a living until we were told, one day he escaped the farm (why?) and was fatally hit by a car. The end.
That story reminds me of another ‘locked- unlocked door’ story. I was selling stereos in a store on 3rd Street, Cambridge, Mass, across from Lechmere’s. Locals will know the location. Big City locale.
So a shop lifter has decided upon his selection, and is casually making his way to the door. We had him made minutes before, but he thought he was cool. Big Steve, about 350 lbs, smoked Pall Mall straights, did coke, suffered fron Pickwickian syndrome, and had long conversations with his life insurance agent, flicked a toogle switch, locking the door. The perp casually walked up to the door. All the employees knew what was up, and ignored the guy, but looked at him with occassional glances. He tried the door. Door remained closed. He backed-up 6 feet, ran towards the door, and shouldered it. Door remained closed. Everybody is staring at him, and smiling. Perp puts our merch down, gets a running start from 10-12 feet away from the door. Just a millisecond before he hits the door, Big Steve flicks the electro-lock from behind the counter. Click. The door flies open, offering no resistance to the inertia of the perp, who then trips, falls to sidewalk, and rolls across the sidewalk into the street.
He jumps up, and runs away.
FIN
you’re a lucky man gb. i think dad’s given up on making it to the bathroom. changing depends, and for how long? this is when character and resolve get put the ultimate test.