Not sure how much I am going to be blogging this weekend, so I thought I would leave you with this, which was mailed in from one of our readers:
Elroy having some dinner.
I think it is time to resurrect Friday catblogging here.
Weekend Open Thread
Elroy having some dinner.
SmilingPolitely
My cat eats bunnies. Really, I’m serious.
ninerdave
Saw this on Benen’s blog yesterday (?)
Left vs Right brain.
Does the dancer spin clockwise or counterclockwise?
Counterclockwise for me, bonus: can you get her to spin the other way?
jcricket
I don’t totally get the meme, but the LOL images at Ezra’s site about S-CHIP are kinda funny.
NO U CANT HAZ HELTHCAIR!
ET
Cats Behaving Badly Friday sounds good.
Krista
Funny, I was just looking at that, from Manolo’s Shoe Blog. I can get her to spin either way. Does that mean I’m all disoriented?
Mary
ninerdave, I saw that the other day. I always start off clockwise, but if I glance away and return, it flips to ccw, then back to cw if I glance away again. But if I look at it the first time after being away from it for a while, it’s always cw.
shaun
If I’m not mistaken, that’s fricasseed brown bat on Wonder Bread crusts. Would you mind sharing the recipe? And would a donation help?
grumpy realist
The dancer site is great. I saw her turn widdershins, then clockwise after I blinked.
I wonder if I can force particular directions based on what I’ve been doing? (Right brain vs. left brain behavior.) Reports will be given in the future….
jcricket
It means you’re bisexual
John Cole
Clockwise for me. And not just a little bit. Before my eyes even adjusted it was swinging clockwise. I tried to get it to go the other way and my eyes got fuzzy and gave me an instant headache.
jnfr
Distinctly clockwise for me, I can get it to go CCW, but only with extreme effort and it returns to clockwise as soon as I blink.
Punchy
Uh…Ninerdave? Thanks. You just caused a huge argument here at work. One guy almost went postal when he starting yelling that the dancer pic “switched directions” (like it was rigged or something). Then he yelled at us when we didn’t see the switch. Wow.
Good Lord people are high-strung today.
OxyCon
Elroy has that Norwegian Forest Cat look that my dear “Chumly” had, except Chumly’s hair was a tad longer (what a furball!).
Tim F.
She looks naked to me.
Billy K
My office went through this yesterday (I injected it into our consciousness via the Great Orange Satan). We had people shouting, arguing in the halls, swearing it reversed itself on a timer (couldn’t explain a GIF to them), and some pleading with me to tell them the “answer” to which way it was really going.
It pretty much shut down out office for a couple hours.
I expect high-strung from our likes, but for a bunch of “creatives,” they were very eager for closure and authority on this. Scary. But I guess that’s why we’re creatives in a gigatocorp.
Salmon of Trout
Or Canadian.
Though my friends from Vancouver tell me that’s pretty much the same thing.
Krista
Goddamn! You mean I’ve been wasting all these years restricting myself to men???
capelza
Oh I don’t have a picture of my nasty old but dearly Australian Screwtail (really a breed) that I can post online.
But she, who was above all things human did have one weak spot. Shellfish. We had a dinner once, and as people were beginning to waunder around after the feast I looked over at the table. All you could see was the tops of two cat ears (she was sitting in a chair) and the occassional paw reaching up and searching for prawn scraps.
She thought she was so clever. Lord I miss her.
ninerdave
Too much internet pr0n for you Tim. Speaking of weekly blog features…what happened to Friday Beer Blogging?
IanY77
I can make her switch directions by looking at the feet and forcing myself to see the opposite direction.
Jake
I’m fairly lydexic and I can’t imagine anything but CW. I think some of you are distracted by boobies.
Tsulagi
That’s a given. Most thinking time I spent on this was guessing her cup size. I’m thinking solid B, maybe B+
Bill Arnold
My cat eats bunnies. Really, I’m serious.
I had a bunny-eater too. The front-clawless (“nerf paws”), nearly toothless hunter would kill them at night, bring them in through a cat door, and eat them on a piece of linoleum by the washing machine.
Dreggas
I can make it switch from going clockwise to counter clockwise and back again, that makes this extremely trippy and one I just shared with the Office before reading what everyone else had to say about sharing it LOL.
Punchy
Stay classy, The Corner.
Rick Taylor
You tagged a Hillary ad as being gag inducing, but I think it’s nothing compared to this one by Mitt Romney. Not so much gag inducing as. . .well, it’s hard to describe. A pretty good sum up of what Republicans are about. Big Brother will protect you from the enemy that wants to destroy you.
Punchy
“looking at the feet”?? Suuuuuuuuuure you are. So the wife’s reading this blog, too?
RSA
Computer geek that I am, what catches my eye in the cat photo is what I first thought was a Botticelli handrest for a laptop.
RSA
Oh, and on the spinning dancer: counterclockwise (which surprised me a bit, my being left-handed, without the slightest hint of ambidexterity).
grumpy realist
We had one cat that you did NOT want to let in to the house when she had a certain Siamese quality to her voice, because it meant “I have a dead mouse with me and I will bring it in, pronto.” Otherwise it was a furry Somme by the doorstep every morning.
Another of our cats was definitely into the foolish rabbit hunting, would lug back young ‘uns bigger than she was, and stash them wherever she could get access to (like the back seat of the car, ugh.)
And our final cat, Petroc, was an inveterate bird hunter. I realized exactly why the term “bird-brained” was invented as I watched him plunk himself right under the bird feeder, all dark grey 15 pounds of him totally visible, just wait until something fluttery came down, and just reach up and grab…..
ET
thanks ninerdave for driving me crazy. I saw clockwise mostly but for a few seconds I saw her going the other way. My experience was more like Mary’s.
kchiker
Blog addict that I am…I first saw the photograph and worried that my fingers had pulled a fast one and had taken me to Althouse instead.
I think everyone that says that they see the dancer going counter-clockwise are simply lying. Or drunk. Now THERE’s an idea. I bet after enough shots she might be tapdancing.
paradox
It’s that Photoshop chick in the right corner of the image, she used to be on the cover art for that software.
paradox
I read the thread, she turns clockwise, always.
An’ she is naked. Hotly curvy gimme gimme naked. I’m an American hetro, gimme a break
libarbarian
I have to share this from ACE-O-SPADES
Mary
Now here’s the tiebreaker: are you right eyed or left eyed?
I’m a right-handed, left-eyed woman who can sculpt and draw and rotates stuff in her mind way better than the average guy, but I get lost in shopping malls. Go figure.
jcricket
Yes, along with all the years wasted spent reading/commenting on this blog, you have been unnecessarily restricting your dating pool.
So don’t say we never taught you nuthin’
Punchy
At the risk of demonstrating that I am a complete nb, does everyone know their iPod has games on it?
This is like the greatest thing evah. I just spent 20 mins playing solitaire (not allowed) while everyone thought I was simply scrolling for a song to play (frowned upon but acceptable). Genius.
Ryan S.
Vote for Shelley Batts : You have to click on the graphic that says “vote for me”.
That pic so reminds me of my cat this morning as soon as she smells toasted anything with butter, she like “Butter!!!”. Incidentally, she will hurt you if you don’t put the plate down on the floor for her to lick the microscopic drips off the plate.
Rick Taylor
Counter-clockwise for me at first (not surprising, I’m a left-brained sort of fellow.
But then I got it to go clockwise by turning my head and looking out of the corner of my eye for a moment. Now I can’t get it to go back to counter-clockwise.
libarbarian
Punchy,
I like Vortex myself. Right now I’m doing work while “watching” Monty Python’s “Life of Brian”. Awesome!
jcricket
Via the NY Daily News
Man, does it smell like popcorn in here or what?
The thrice-married serial adulterer with a pro-choice, anti-gun, pro-tax-increase background with ties to convicted felons vs. the flip-flopping Mormon that evangelicals hate. The Republican sure do know how to have a good time.
Dreggas
WHAT’S WORSE?
Story from Houston Medical Center
A man went to the hospital to have his wedding ring cut off from his penis.
According to the Nurse attending, the patient’s girl friend found the ring in his pants pocket and she got so mad at him, she used petroleum jelly to slip the ring on his penis while he was asleep.
I don’t know what’s worse:
1) Having your girl friend find out you’re married.
2) Explaining to your wife how your wedding ring got on your penis.
3) Or finding out your penis fits through your wedding ring.
Mary
Damn. I hope he didn’t see any cute nurses in the ER — oh, wait. I totally hope he saw some cute nurses in the ER. Bastard.
jcricket
Man, the number of traitorous former Republicans who are now aligned with the “John Coles of the left” is really growing lately:
(emphasis added by me).
jcricket
Forgot to add this link to the Great Orange Satan with a more complete list of recent party switchovers.
Doesn’t include all the Republicans retiring suddenly rather than shame themselves by continuing to run with an (R) next to their names.
Punchy
I’m assuming they mean “passed out”. Sorry, but if a girl starts to apply vaseline to my wang while in R.E.M., I’m going to be suddenly not in R.E.M. anymore. More like H.E.A.V.E.N. Until, of course, I accurately gauge what the hell she’s attempting to do.
Face
First of all, copyright infrigement?
Second of all, this is .gov. This is the official stance of the Republicans in Congress, not a blog?
Holy crap.
The Other Steve
Your tax dollars at work.
Jake
Screw that asshole. How does a guy with a dick that small get two partners?
That is brilliant. Or eeeexcellent. After a bit of searching to make sure it wasn’t a brilliant act of hacking, I called to express my appreciation. (202) 225-3641.
Looks like John isn’t the only Rep with a sense of humor.
The Other Steve
Did you ever consider that maybe he just has exceptionally large fingers?
jcricket
That was pretty good. I’m sure it will be blamed on a rogue staffer or whatever, but from now on I’d like to think of all Republican politicans as Mr Burns.
“Smithers, get me some of those stem cells, I feel a little piqued”
jcricket
Or the ring is really a scrunchie.
Mary
Well, something got scrunchied.
jcricket
Maybe his wedding ring was really a c*ck ring? I’ll be here all week folks, don’t forget to tip your waitress. Try the fish.
I’m still confused as to why he had to have it cut off. Did he get one of those Cheney-special purple-pill 4-hour erections?
rawshark
Clockwise the whole time.
jcricket
Are we talking about the ring or the dancer now. I’m lost.
ninerdave
Re: the dancer.
Being the left brain freak I am, I analyzed the gif and the reason it works, is that there is no indication that you are looking at the front or the back of her at any given time.
I had fun torturing my co-workers with it today as well.
KCinDC
The bedwetters have found a new threat: we must be vigilant for the menace of poison gumballs.
HyperIon
i don’t think i am controlling this. she just changes direction when i think i’ve reached stablity.
i saw an interesting presentation on UW channel here in seattle about how the brain just makes things fit regardless of the image on the retina. kinda like that experiment with the prism glasses that turn everything upside down. after less than a week, the brain just applies an inversion. pretty amazing.
for some reason the link fails. when i paste it in the browser, it’s OK but not here as a link. hmmm. why?
anyway…this isn’t too wide.
http://www.uwtv.org/programs/displayevent.aspx?rID=16249
tBone
Forcing the ring on (assuming the guy actually isn’t a pencil-dick) would cause some swelling, and it would only get worse with the constriction from the ring. I jammed my finger once in high school and had to have my class ring cut off (OF MY FINGER, smartasses) because of the swelling.
I looked the story up on Snopes, and while they couldn’t verify this particular version, they did have several similar cases that checked out, with one important deviation: the guys did it to themselves.
I often wonder why women haven’t given up on us entirely.
grumpy realist
I’m having an informal survey among my fellow MITers:
So far, majority have said “clockwise” (i.e., right-brained), which says something about stereotypes and engineers….
Dreggas–one would almost wish to see your story end up with some sort of Darwin award….
Not only did the guy have his wang fit through the ring, but he didn’t even wake up. Now THAT’s embarassing.
jcricket
Obviously not having ever been in anything like a similar situation, I appreciate the insight.
But I have to say, the whole class ring/finger story isn’t very likely. I checked my records and your particular class used a soft metal for the ring, which would have made it malleable, plus the receipt you produced has the wrong font for the dot-matrix receipt printers used in the day. So I’d say what’s more likely is that you used Final Cut and Avid (being a Mac user/liberal) to falsify the actual record that shows you never even graduated from school, henceforth, no class ring.
whippoorwill
These people are beyond bed-wetting. They need to have permanent Foley catheters installed with the little ankle bags.
John S.
I saw the lady go clockwise at first, but then I stared at for a bit and she started going counter-clockwise. She flips back and forth on me depending on when I look at it.
The engineer situation doesn’t surprise me at all, and only someone who has never been around an engineer would assume they would be left-brained. My father is an acoustical engineer and my brother is a mechanical engineer, and they are both definitely right-brained.
RSA
Interesting stuff. If anyone’s interested in the practical application of vision research to computer visualization, this page has cool stuff on it. It’s a long page, but at least scroll down to the Change Blindness section and click on one of the photos. They flip between different versions of the same scene, but with significant changes that your eyes just don’t automatically pick up.
g-rant
Am I the only one who’s impressed that James Urbaniak reads this blog?
Cain
So what does that mean? You’re some kind of flip flopper?
cain
binzinerator
[While wiping away coffee laughed out of my nose] Oh Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ. Shit like that is why I keep coming back here.
tBone
And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you pesky
kidscitizen journalists!Ninerdave
Tomorrow is my last BBQ of the season, so I thought I’d present to you “Dave’s How to Look Like You Know What You are Doing Around a BBQ and Impress Your Friends”
Not to toot my own horn (of course you know I’m going to) but I’m generally considered the best BBQ guy in my circle of friends. Also note, I’m a San Francisco Bay Area dude…we’re not exactly known for BBQ up here (although I’ve eaten BBQ all over the country, so I sorta know what’s what).
Unless you are doing competition Q, there are only three things you need to know to impress your friends.
1) Use quality meat. Even though BBQ cuts are typically the dregs of the animal, still use a quality meat. Forgo your local supermarket and find a butcher.
2) Use a rub. Sauces are for amateurs and if used should be served on the side.
3) Use a thermometer for both your smoker/grill and the meat. You should cook at a temp between 200-250 and the meat should be done when it hits 190. These rules of thumb work for most BBQ. Plan an hour and a half to two hours per pound of meat and obviously never cook over the charcoal, cook indirectly.
Apply rub the night before. I use a rub containing:
Paprika
Brown Sugar
In equal amounts then:
Cumin
Celery Seed
Different Chili Powders
Cinnamon
Garlic Powder
Onion Powder
Salt
Pepper
Smoke Salt
To taste.
Make sure you have left over rub!!
Also soak woodchips in beer (or wine or whiskey or what not) the night before.
Day off, start a small fire and get your smoker up to temp. Then add charcoal and wood chips as needed. You get the smoke ring before 140 degrees!! After that stop using wood chips.
Backyard BBQ is about flash as much as it is about food!! This cannot be understated!
It’s flashy to have a bunch of thermometers hanging off your grill (and it helps you control temps) bouns points for wireless thermometers.
Your wood chips soaking in booze? Flashy! Fancy chefs cook with booze. Does it add anything to the taste? I’ve never been able to tell, but I say it does and always get “Wow, man! never thought of that…yeah I can taste it…great idea!, etc etc”
Different woods? Sure…try ’em, again i can’t tell. I know the pros swear by this or that, if you use something other than the standard hickory, point it out and tell people it adds to the flavor.
Use lump charcoal, burns better and again looks fancy.
the extra rub? throw it on the top of your meat about 15 minutes before you pull it off. Adds a nice burst of flavor, and again looks like you know what you’re doing.
Let people sample your rub, ask them what they taste. Then don’t tell ’em what’s in it. Every BBQ chef has a secret something or other. Keep it that way. Good way to learn what others think of the rub.
Besides brisket, most meats don’t need to be mopped or kept moist. In fact it ruins the bark. For brisket I usually keep a pan of water or booze in the smoker (booze = fancy).
and good god never lift the lid on your BBQ. If you’re lookin’ you aint cookin’ trust the thermometers. Opening the lid means that the BBQ has to warm up again, which depending on the size can be a while.
Summary: BBQ is about flash as much as it is about food. If you use quality food and some simple techniques, you pretty much can’t screw it up, it’s the flash that makes you look pro.
Use gizmos, use booze, use secrets.
There you have it.
Anyone have other BBQ words of wisdom? Always glad to talk BBQ!
Cain
er wow.. change of pace.. when do we apply teh vaseline?
cain
jcricket
I like to think of Malkin and her ilk as the “Wonder Twins” (or maybe just Gleek).
Totally unnecessary, always getting people into trouble, useless superpowers (i.e. able to incorrectly identify countertops while speculating wildly during a drive-by).
Or maybe she’s Scrappy Do.
jcricket
Doo, Scrappy Do.
Scrappy Do sounds like some sort of wussy martial art (Scrappy-Do Dojo).
Too late, must stop trying to snark after 10pm.
Anne Laurie
Stuff always tastes better when you’ve stolen it from somebody else. One of the few things Republicans ever learned from their cats.
Our Maine Coon, the Demon Kishkan, does not eat bunnies. She *kills* bunnies, especially adorable palm-sized baby bunnies, and leaves their mutilated corpses on the back stoop. Given her personality, we assume this is her way of intimidating us. She never pays attention to her victims after dumping them on the porch, except for the one time I heard her howling at the door and thought she’d gotten injured at the gun club across the street. Turned out she’d killed chipmunk — chipmunks are *hard to kill* — and wanted to be sure I admired her prowess.
louisms
I’m so proud of my Angora, Chester, that I have to share this. He can not only has learned to (occasionally) use the toilet rather than the litter box, but generally flushes too (though sometimes unnecessarily just to watch the water swirl). He is absolutely the smartest cat I’ve ever seen.
And, since I replaced the T-shaped taps on my bathroom sink with those paddle-shaped taps, he’s learned on his own to turn on the water to take a drink. Now if he’d just turn the faucet off when he’s done drinking/playing.
Chuck Butcher
As a right eye dominate left hander I live in a confusing world. It is natural for me to throw, hammer, or shoot right handed, most of those things I can do left handed but not as well – shooting is closest to as well. The lady’s rotation depends on just how I look at her. I play ice hockey left handed, golf (sort of) left handed, and bat left. So I suppose it is no wonder that I’m a drag racing, gun toting lefty Democtrat…who loves the Blues and History.
I’m a damn mess
If I could get my wedding ring off it’d never go on there.
Face
Oh. my. god.
Fledermaus
That happened to me. I looked at it a bunch of times. Looking away and such, and every time it was clock-wise. Then I started watching the shadow, looked back up and it was going counter clockwise. That’s just messed up.
D-Chance.
So
USCLSUis clearly the best team in the nation?Uh, go South freakin’ Florida???
grumpy realist
Another MIT report, from a physicist: can flip the rotation of the dancer voluntarily, but there does to seem to be a tendency for CW rotation (hence right-brained). Says that the shadow indicates CCW rotation and that’s how he was able to start switching.
(All right, where are all you 6.1 and 6.3 bastards out there?!! We need some more data! )
Rick Taylor
Bill Maher makes a point that’s been on my mind, when talking about Obama and pin-gate.
Libby Spencer
Well, I’ll leave the penis problems to the experts here. I’m still obsessing about the dancer. I can see her going in both directions and once I overcame my fixed expectation, it definitely looks like it switches randomly on its own and not on anything I do with focusing my eyes.
I might note that it does help to focus on her body only from the ass down. It’s the head turning and breasts that fools the brain I think.
Tony Alva
Bring back the cat blogging, it’s the only sign of sanity left atthis blog.