Stan Taylor

This is Sophia, a six-week-old Lhasa Apso that we took care of for a few days last week:

Heather Armstrong discovers the Good Dog Carl books, and says (though with more vulgarity) pretty much the same thing I did when I first read one of them:

What mother in her right mind leaves her baby in a stroller at the bottom of an escalator in a department store TO BE WATCHED OVER BY A DOG? Do the police know that this is in print? AND I‘M THE BAD MOTHER?

The person who named the food that we bought for Samuel’s hermit crabs had a sick sense of humor. Not ‘Hermit Crab Chow’ or ‘Hermit Crab Food’, but ‘Hermit Crab Cakes’! Mmmm.

This morning I went running on the Town Lake hike and bike trail. As usual, there were a lot of people out running, some of whom had their dogs. I always feel sorry for the dogs, especially the water breeds like Labs. I can just hear them saying to their people (not literally hear, as in Eddie-Murphy-as-Dr.-Doolittle hear): You mean we just came down here to run? Excuse me, I’m a water dog and that’s a lake. Lab! Lake! Dog! Water! Ducks in Lake! Must chase ducks!
There was one lucky dog at Auditorium Shores whose person was throwing sticks into the lake and letting the dog retrieve them. The others could only watch and wish.

This morning, I heard a radio advertisement for a furniture store. The ad claimed that their current sale “is the most looked forward to event of the year.”
Why not just “most anticipated”? Poor copyediting?

A newsbite from The Copenhagen Post:

For centuries, Danish churchgoers have received the body of Christ in the form of a small, bland communion wafer. Now, competition is on the way.
Ninety master bakers from the island of Funen have taken up the challenge to experiment with new recipes for the holy flesh, daily religious newspaper Kristeligt Dagblad reported on Thursday.
‘We have never tried anything like this before,’ Svendborg baker Gerner Pedersen said. ‘It’s very exciting. I think I will go for a baguette made out of a mixture of wheat and rye flour. That would give a good, strong taste of bread.’
Copenhagen deacon Finn Laugesen said he wished the bakers all the best. ‘But for as long as I have been responsible for the communion wafers, I’ve gone for the most neutral taste I could find,’ he said. ‘After all, the bread should symbolize the body of Jesus, and the wafer shouldn’t be getting all the attention. Just imagine if the pastor at the altar would say ‘This is the body of Jesus Christ. Would you like that with chocolate, vanilla or strawberry taste?’

Here’s a news flash: how about just using real bread?

Yesterday, the Supreme Court started hearing arguments about whether it’s constitutional for Texas and Kentucky to display the Ten Commandments on state grounds (Texas has a monument on the state capitol grounds). However, Fred Clark points out one issue I haven’t seen elsewhere:

The Pentateuch provides three slightly different versions [of the commandments], and various traditions have adopted these lists in slightly different ways. (ReligiousTolerance.org has a nice rundown of the differences.) The display of any particular version, therefore, requires a sectarian choice.

Interesting issue.

As a dog person, I can relate to Heather Armstrong’s comment:

I just spent $20 to have my dog’s anal sacs squeezed because he�s been greasing the couch lately. That may seem a bit exorbitant for a little gland squeezing, but it will definitely go down as the best $20 I ever spent: I DON’T HAVE TO SQUEEZE THEM MYSELF.

Unfortunately, cheap trumps disgusting for me.

My wife is a college rhetoric and comp instructor, so I frequently hear about instances where students let the spell check substitute the wrong word. Check this out (click on photo for a larger version and read the small type along the bottom):

A 22-pound lobster was caught off Nantucket, Massachusetts. Interesting. Even more interesting, from the article:

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sent Wholey [the owner of the lobster] a letter asking him to work with the group to release Bubba back in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Maine.
Another group calling itself People For Eating Tasty Animals reportedly offered Wholey a hefty price for the lobster. At Tuesday’s price of $14.98 a pound, Bubba would retail for about $350.

UPDATE: Here’s the lobster: