Nettie Price is my kind of artist!

There's a lady who lives just up the road from us in a town called Palm Coast, and she's a very talented painter of dogs. Here are two of her pictures that were in the newspaper the other day. I like these especially because the dogs in them remind me of yours truly.

The first one is called "Hoss in Heaven":

See the resemblance?

And this one is "Khaki Shorts Goes Fishing":

Pretty cool stuff, huh?

Her website is called "Nettie Price: Sparkling Art for the Young at Heart." Check it out.

Keep up the fine work, Nettie! And if you ever need a well-behaved model, just give me a jingle.

A Whale of a Tale, Wrapped Up in Some Doggone Fine Music

If you're looking for a "story" song about two guys who are trapped in the belly of a whale, and one of them wants to kill the other one to avenge a wrong the second guy did to the first one's mother long ago, and the first one has been looking for the second one for at least fifteen years plus twenty months, well then, "The Mariner's Revenge Song," written by Colin Meloy and performed by his band, The Decemberists, is your best bet.

Truth be told, I had some trouble following the lyrics at first, because there are a lot of them. (Sometimes when people are talking to me, all I'm apt to hear is blah, blah, blah, Buddy, especially if I'm tired, which I was when I first watched this video on YouTube.) For your convenience, here's a link to the song's words if you need to see them. And here's a useful Wikipedia article about it.

While I ended up liking the story, after doing my research, what I enjoy most about the video are the sounds of the instruments and the singers' rather strange voices, and especially the drummer's driving beat, which reminds me of eating French fries. What I mean by that is once you get started, you don't want it to stop.

Check it out. (For the wide-format version, go here.)

Who's a good soldier? Who's a gooood soldier? Who? Who? HOOAH!

COL Fred P. Taylor, that's who! He's also the most awesome adoptive brother-in-law a pup could ask for. And I want to be the first true "dogface" to congratulate him on his retirement from the U.S. Army's Judge Advocate General Corps. Here's a recent family picture of Fred with Mike, Annabelle, and Bonnie:

In honor of Fred's retirement and to celebrate his 27-year career, Luisa Santiago put together this great slideshow. (For the bigger-format version at YouTube, go here.)

Thank you for your service, Fred. You and your whole family are way cool!