A Matter of Opinion

M's got his tail in a crack. He says our cats couldn't stink up their litter box as bad as the FSU football team stunk up Doak Campbell Stadium tonight.

Excuse me? Couldn't stink it up as bad as . . . ? I happen to believe stinky litter boxes smell pretty good. Kinda makes me wish we'd gone to the game.

David Axelrod needs your help!

In preparing for this post I went Googling for some pictures of a guy who's been on TV a lot recently. His name is David Axelrod and he was a senior campaign advisor for President Obama. Now he's mostly known for his famous facial hair, which is a pretty nice mustache, and the question of whether he'll soon have to shave it off on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" show. He's offered to do this if he can raise a million dollars for research against an illness called epilepsy by the end of this month. A big reason he's interested in this cause is that his daughter, Lauren, has epilepsy. The people on "Morning Joe" are helping him out, and I hope you will, too.

Mr. Axelrod has started a website called slashthestache.com, where you can donate to fight epilepsy. Now here is the problem: November ends in just ten more days, and as of today he's barely halfway to his million-dollar goal. So if you want to see him lose the mustache, you need to get cracking. I don't know what to suggest if you like the mustache and want him to keep it. You can probably go to this website for the sponsoring charity, which is called CURE (Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy), and donate without it counting toward Mr. Axelrod's goal. The main thing is, you should donate!

By the way, here is a picture of David Axelrod with his mustache:

Is it just me, or does he look a lot like Mike's favorite economist, John Maynard Keynes?

Okay, so they didn't make it to the real White House.

Maybe this would be a good alternative.

How does it feel to be 237?

Ask a Marine. I'm guessing it feels pretty good. All over the world today, groups of U.S. Marines will be celebrating the Corps' founding 237 years ago by cutting into cakes like this one:

Or this one:

Or this:

Or . . . well, you get the picture:

Man, I'd be totally proud to guard any one of those cakes until the Marines were ready to eat it! I really would.

Happy birthday to Marines of all sizes!

Bird is the Word!

As we set out on our walk this morning, M and I saw a couple of big birds pecking the grass in front of our next-door neighbor's house. They weren't yellow, like that Sesame Street one that Mitt Romney was gunning for before the election. These were sandhill cranes, and there are quite a few of them in our area. But this was the closest I've seen them to our house.

We walked on past them, and they started walking along with us, not paying any attention to us, but just poking around for their breakfast. As they did, they kept making these chortling, chattering noises. They make these sounds almost all the time, whether they're flying or walking.

Not too surprisingly, we didn't have our camera with us. So I can't post our own pictures to show you what they look like. That, of course, is where Google rides to the rescue. Behold, a pair of sandhill cranes pretty much like ours:

The four of us kind of walked along together to the corner and around it, and then the cranes started moving away from us, because I tend to stop and smell the roses a lot, if you get my drift. A little while later we saw them way down a side street. We tried to catch up to them, but before we could get there they flew away. Here's what they look like when they fly (again courtesy of Google):

To hear the strange sounds they make, click this link and open the WAV file in Windows Media Player or whatever music program you use.