My funny valentine, Sweet comic valentine...

You make me smile with my heart.

In remembrance of Joanna Burke and Tina

Joanna gives Tina (a pachyderm I will always hold near and dear) some tender loving care at The Elephant Sanctuary near Hohenwald Tennessee.



They both passed on the same day in different years. Tina in 2004. Joanna in 2006.



A special memorial is planned to mark the anniversary of their deaths on July 21st at The Elephant Sanctuary.



May you together be in the happiest of places with all of the beings you both love and hold dear, those who have come and gone and are free. Know your work goes on and...we miss you.

cucumber pecking order

World's tallest man weds (very sweet, this)

I want one of these

i'm in ur pond stalkin' ur bait
(from the Daily Puppy)

Rediscovered, but sadly lacking updates: the adorable Cricket.

Dog love

Doesn't this just melt your heart?

Mud Spa

Dulary gets down!



Yes, Dulary appears to be enjoying Sanctuary life.



Dulary's old life documented here. Not a pretty picture.

Elephant sandwich

Rough and tumble Misty (center left) stands protectively close to Dulary (center right). They are fast becoming best friends. After all Misty's been through in the dreadful circus industry I could hug her to pieces. She's constantly joyful. Winkie and Sissy, another bonded pair, stand on either side.

It must be amazing to work and live with these animals.
All the news here.

Another pachyderm arrives in paradise

Asian elephant Dulary (left) is befriended by Tarra, the Elephant Sanctuary's first resident and official greeter of all newcomers, and the first Asian elephant Dulary has seen in over 40 years. The heartwarming story of Dulary's journey from zoo to sanctuary can be read here.

Dulary explores a fraction of her new 2700-acre world.

Here she'll find forest, pastures, hills, and a 25-acre lake where catfish jump and one beaver nests. She'll share this land with wild deer, coyotes and turkeys, rescued dogs and cats, and human caregivers whose sole purpose is looking after the animals who live here. She'll have access to a spacious, solar-heated barn filled with natural light whenever she decides she needs it. But for now, it seems, Dulary is content to sleep under the stars with her new family.

Kudos and then some to the Philadelphia zoo who listened and put the needs of their elephants first.

Photo of the day

Eli, an Australian cattle dog, leaps off the back of his owner, Josh Mumme, while chasing a disc at Riverside Park in Grand Rapids, Mich.

More impossibly cute pet photos.

Purrfection

Ntodd's petz.

4/5 of the Pack (third down) looks like an Annie Leibovitz Vanity Fair cover pic. I have advised Ntodd that I totally love it and would buy the large size. Seriously.

Recommended

Album: West by Lucinda Williams

The Amazing Chase or A Blur of Bassets:

Writing: James Wolcott on Rush Limbaugh:

Global warming's most popular denialist, talk radio's most imitated showman, conservatism's minister of disinformation, he has injected millions of semi-vacant American skulls with a cream filling of complacency that has helped thrust this country into the forefront of backward leadership. He has given Republican lawmakers the rhetorical cover fire to do nothing but snicker as the crisis emerged and impressed itself on the rest of the world. He conscripted concern for nature as just another weapon in the Culture Wars. May the grasses of his favorite golf courses go forever yellow and dust storms whip from the sand traps.

Amen, brother.

Opinion: What Echidne said about Markos who called Kathy Sierra a whiner for taking email threats of rape and murder seriously.

Echidne's final words on the Imus debacle.

He's been dancing (or tottering) on the edge, and his supporters have been applauding his brilliance. Only this time he chose go a little too close to the edge and fell over. It's not kosher, even in today's fundamentalist America, to call young women playing college basketball nappy-haired hos, when these young women did nothing to hurt Imus, had no political power and were in general acting out the accepted version of the American dream. This is pretty much the consensus, and we should not forget it.

Now step back a little, and ask what it is that we are not really debating in this great Imus-debacle. We are not debating the context (watch the video on the site) in which Imus's comment came. It started with him making fun of the idea that women could play basketball at all, and it continued with essentially rating the fuckability of the two teams in the championship match. It then turned into the "nappy-haired hos" statement.

This context seems to me to consist of first ridiculing women's athletic abilities, then their right to be seen as anything but sexual objects for men like Imus, and then putting the black women into their even lower place as nothing but frightening whores.

Now, this is not how Imus spoke, of course. He spoke in code. But the reason he expected his audience to appreciate the code is that he believed them to agree with him on all those matters. It is this that should be the talking point in the debates, much more than whether certain things can be said or not and by whom.

Coming soon: Another motherfucker should be out of a job next week. Wolfowitz apologized "to a few hundred staff members assembled in the bank building atrium, only to be greeted by booing, catcalls and cries for his resignation." I'm no fan of the World Bank but I chuckle thinking of staid bureaucrats heckling this asshole. Goddamn, that must have been a sweet moment.

Too frickin' adorable for words