take me home little blue, take me home

i haven't been here lately but i see there are new ways to use google, etc. to make short blog entries. so i'm using a story on some hard times for the little blue and a burst of energy helped by a wonderful penquin quilt from a special friend to slow down my facebook dependence and make something i can be permanently proud of. this is tentatively entitled: capitol hill - where elegant penguins live.
the sad story with an upside, people helping little blues for whom this blog is named - and a picture of their cuteness: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/05/20/la-nina-causes-mass-penguin-deaths-in-new-zealand/

and now for something mostly different

tired of my too cute penguins, try a website that’s dedicated to disapproving rabbits:

http://www.disapprovingrabbits.com/.

the rabbits there are obviously committed to disturbing their too cute anthropomorphized image. the titles are a little lame and unnecessary - but there’s still giggles there for us undeserving humans in pictures like the one above.
flowers are a less complicated pleasure. hibiscus are one of my favorites. my morning wakeup puzzle today from jigzone, http://www.jigzone.com/, was a hibiscus and here it is for you to play with. [it will route you to jigzone to work, so please come back if you work on it before you read on.]



p.s. the pythons of completely different are out and about again. They’re coming back for a special week on ifc and the times has a good article with current and past news about them:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/arts/television/04mcgr.html

here's a quote that taps into my personal history memory including beyond the fringe. i would apply the terms happily to my oklahoma growing up:

With the exception of Mr. Gilliam, the sole American, the Pythons all grew up in middle-class families in provincial towns and were very much a product of postwar British culture: cautious, decorous, respectable, nice. They wanted to blow it up.
“That culture wasn’t hard enough to be rigid,” [John] Cleese recalled .... “It was more stuffy — it was like wrestling with a sponge. I
remember going to see ‘Beyond the Fringe’ in 1962 and hearing screams of laughter. They were screams of liberation.”

footprinz - a youthful king penguin.

official title or reference - 'leave only a footprint', as in the "eco-traveller’s mantra" . i sense a better message if we allow for the possibility that the penguin may not believe the footprint should be there at all.

égalité and anatole

"autre motif d’orgueuil, que d’ tre citoyen! cela consiste pour les pauvres soutenir et conserver les riches dans leur puissance et leur oisivit . ils y doivent travailler devant la majestueuse galit des lois, qui interdit au riche comme au pauvre de coucher sous les ponts, de mendier dans les rues et de voler du pain."

an august weekend indulging in my somewhat predictable melange of physical and mental meanderings with penguins and the computer always lurking. then came the convergence moment which i love so much. the result is an opportunity to begin a blog with one of those nonenglish quotations that imply sophistication in the writer.
i never put together two things i knew about a nobel prize winning french writer who chose the pen[guin] name of anatole france. françois-anatole thibault lived from 1844 -1924. wikipedia describes him as a french poet, journalist, and novelist. ‘ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal french man of letters.’ his official nobel prize bio has a formal history of his literary life which concludes coyly: ‘in his later years france became increasingly interested in social questions. he protested the verdict in the dreyfus case and developed some sympathies for socialism'
it seems that monsieur france and i share a healthy disrespect for the religion of our upbringing, christianity, and a perhaps resultant appreciation for irony* to help deal with its omnipresence. france let his feelings out in a wonderful satirical novel which i am finally reading on line as the weekend goes on. it’s the only novel i know of featuring my little flightless friends: penguin island. in it france tells us about an aging nearly blind priest who lands on an island inhabited only by penguins and mistakes them for humans needing baptism in his faith. his actions provoke a meeting of the divine powers that concludes the only solution is to convert the penguins into humans**. so far i have read what happens as the now human birds are lead to the need to wear clothes and have their own property. i wont force feed anyone his description of the results and their religious base except to note that they do fit with my own preconceptions.

france is also responsible for another literary statement of things i myself believe. i have long quoted one english version of the quotation i started this thing with.

"the law, in its majestic impartiality, forbids the rich and poor alike to sleep under the bridges of paris."

france identified a basic flaw in application of the principle of equal treatment of disparate people. today, as in his time, the law creates crimes and procedures that fall harder on minorities and the poor. a current bad example: paying for your jail stays. in many cases they are more likely to have orders to pay for their jail stay and less able to pay while richer lighter defendants are less likely to go to or stay in jail and can buy a more comfortable incarceration.
it recently occurred to me that there is also a parallel fault in those cases claiming ‘reverse’ discrimination against white people and/or males. i’ve always been deeply offended by this whole idea. i have lived thru the time when discrimination went from an unchallenged norm to a time when the constitutional protection of equal treatment was brought into ‘real’ law by being acknowledged in statutes and judicial decision. there have been positive results - can you say barack. but those claims are part of a recent history of coopting and undercutting of the protections. suddenly equality is what lawyers sometimes call black letter law - law that must be enforced literally. those who received the benefit of discrimination now receive the benefit of laws against it. the fight against real continuing discrimination is demeaned by reinforcing the right of all to sleep under the bridge.
i wonder what blind justice translates to in french

* "irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom."
** france’s description of the formal conclusion reminds me of the comments of bertrand russell who first taught me that i need not believe everything i was told: "'let us not deliberate any longer,' said [god]. the opinion broached by gentle old hermas is the only one conformable to my eternal designs. these birds will be changed into men. i foresee in this several disadvantages. many of those men will commit sins they would not have committed as penguins. truly their fate through this change will be far less enviable than if they had been without this baptism and this incorporation into the family of abraham. but my foreknowledge must not encroach upon their free will.
in order not to impair human liberty, i will be ignorant of what i know, i will thicken upon my eyes the veils i have pierced, and in my blind clearsightedness i will let myself be surprised by what i have foreseen."

postscript on flight and anthropodenial

as usual on sunday morning, i began the day by looking for what gifts wiley miller and gary trudeau had left for me overnite. i discovered wiley had provided me an afterthought to yesterday's edition. he combined the fantasy of flight with a gentle, but all to real, commentary on a current example of human's lack of superiority to animals. i offer it as a link, non sequitur today, since i haven't yet mastered the art of getting non sequitur to fit on my page.

meanwhile i'm already in love with anthropodenial as a word and concept. in my lawyer world i work with professionals of all sorts who deny their part in the system's discrimination and prejudice and clients who deny how they've taken their anger out on others who don't deserve it.

on a more personal level, i hear the denial of the holocaust by certain loudmouths and cry when i some special people deny their own anti-semitism. appropriately a jewish congregation offers another special non sequitur on the subject which it calls simply in memoriam.

the author of my newly discovered term finishes his piece with an appropriate last word:

we must be very careful not to exaggerate the uniqueness of our species. The ancients apparently never gave much thought to this practice, the opposite of anthropomorphism, and so we lack a word for it. I will call it anthropodenial: a blindness to the humanlike characteristics of other animals, or the animal-like characteristics of ourselves.

anthropodenial and flightless creatures

this is [ad]man’s newest attempt to prove that penguins not being able to fly on their own can be made into a pretty good bit of humor that might sell something. the first part is right and probably the second too. this is the always mixed blessing of human's enjoyment of my little flightless friends and other creatures.

check out this official analysis from adweek that manages to 1] use ‘anthropomorphize’ and a bad pun in the same sentence and 2] ignore penguins and humans equal inability to fly on their own. then see if the wikipedia piece seems relevant to you.

The star is cute and this Pepsi spot packs a potent visual punch from start to finish. But why would BBDO choose to anthropomorphize such bird-brained behavior to tout a soft drink in the first place? The tagline, "I can," provides as good an answer as any. This approach makes about as much sense as polar bears pitching Coca-Cola -- but that proved popular, so maybe it's a smart strategy for these beverage behemoths to flock together. --David Gianatasio

Anthropomorphism is the attribution of uniquely human characteristics to non-human creatures and beings, natural and supernatural phenomena, material states and objects or abstract concepts. Subjects for anthropomorphism commonly include animals and plants depicted as creatures with human motivation able to reason and converse, forces of nature such as winds or the sun, components in games, unseen or unknown sources of chance, etc. Almost anything can be subject to anthropomorphism. The term derives from a combination of the Greek (ánthropos), "human" and (morphe), "shape" or "form".

Humans seem to have an innate capacity to project human characteristics in this way. Evidence from art and artifacts suggests it is a long-held propensity that can be dated back to earliest times. It is strongly associated with the art of storytelling where it also appears to have ancient roots. Most cultures possess a long-standing fable tradition with anthropomorphised animals as characters that can stand as commonly recognised types of human behaviour. The use of such literature to draw moral conclusions can be highly complex.

Within these terms, humans have more recently been identified as having an equivalent opposite propensity to deny common traits with other species—most particularly apes—as part of a feeling that humans are unique and special. This tendency has been referred to as Anthropodenial.

a quick addition to penguin animations - penguin graphics
i just stumbled on this page which has a bunch of penguin gifs, some animated and some not. it also includes penguin backgrounds and headers/lines which i don't know how to use. i can't get the html code right to make it a sophisticated link so i'll repeat the url for you to copy into the browser. pengophiles will find it worth the extra work. the rest of you feel free to go on to the next blog, rollin in my sweet baby's flippers.
http://www.webcreationsbyjumpy.com/gifs/animalgifs/animals/penguins/penguingifs.htm

don't poke the penguin - my continuing penguin/puter saga

most people who know me personally know that, starting around 'the turn of the century'*, i learned the internet by really learning about penguins and vice-versa. today i offer the latest result of that matching. [*i really like to say that.]

i've wanted to share my anti-poking animation for some time but i just didn't know how to install an animation in a blog. [actually there's an interactive version of don't poke that will take more learning.] blogger help and my near adult granddaughter stephanie pushed up my learning curve and i found you do it by embedding the animation from one of those internet 'storage sites' like photobucket. it turns out that i already had one of those housing my way too extensive collection of penguin animations. a little cleaning up and updating and i am now prepared to offer a few of my favorites hoping it might entice even the non-pengophiles to look at more of them at some other locations.

MONKEY BALL:

RESERVOIR PENGUINS - stephanie's favorite:

ICEMAKER - my other favorite pengie joke:

more penguin animations online - you can copy from all of them to your own computer as i did back when for some of my current collection:

mony’s curry and potluck - animations. from sweden - one of the original penguin supersites and the first really good collections of animations i found. get it while you can. she's going to have to shut down in august.

penguin dance - all penguins all dancing. diabetics beware.

bwendo’s penguin animations - the remaining 130+ i didn't inflict on you. most of the best are up front.

st penguin's day - irish notes

my claim to 'heritage' happily includes ireland and the irish. i put heritage in quotes to differentiate myself from the ubiquitous oklahoma nonindian claim to 'indian heritage'. i did not grow up in any way irish and my claim to a relationship with things irish comes from consuming and enjoying ireland as delivered to me in books, movies and sounds. i do not choose to insult the irish by claiming i are one whether or not i may have an ancestor who was in fact irish.

my penguinista friend jen [see her link to the right] gives me a chance to prepare for st. patrick's day with some words and a pic that combines two of my loves - penguins and the irish - without claiming i am of penguin heritage.

first a moment in the catskills with my lost new york friend tom hoffman and his family. when bernice and i travelled to new york with our new van and 6 children back when, tom and kathy took us to an 'irish festival' . the festival is like a number of summer tourist drinking events nomiminally dedicated to an indentifiable group. this one however also includes first and later irish expatriates. they demonstrate the absolute angsts of being irish and of being a hyphenated american [cf. american indian.]. they fervently sang 'give ireland back to the irish' and then were just as loud when the song was 'god bless america'. they have escaped - but can not escape - the agony of the 'troubles', the 200 year long reaction to great britain's claim to own ireland and its people. . there is an interruption to the violence but within the week there has been more. i mention all this in part to recommend one of the most beautiful and sad short stories i have ever read: frank o'connor's 'guests of the nation'. it is the story of two new ira recruits assigned to guarding two captive british soldiers who they are ultimately ordered to kill after all have interacted as people. it obviously speaks to the sadness of war - implicitly it also speaks to religion as the basis for war and conquering between neighbors. i couldn't find it online but i unabashedly recommend the story for real reading.

in more modern times 1972's 'bloody sunday' united rockers from both side of the pond to sing against the british in ireland. u2 and beatles john and paul all sang out and in fact it was paul who wrote the first song the irish americans were singing. i'll close with his version of the song and a recommendation that you read wikipedia's account of bloody sunday that gives a capsulized history of the day and the troubles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_(1972)

betty boop and the wayback machine
my morning wanderings have given me an old penguin cartoon from betty boop's creator, a website by which you can find lost websites and a penguin website that will allow me to impose my penguin love a little bit less on this particular blog. i'll pass these on as links along with a musical suggestion.
the wayback machine is part of the internet archive, a wonderful place to look for things by itself. the wayback machine allows you to search for lost or discontinued websites. check it out at: http://www.archive.org/web/web.php
the 1937 penguin cartoon is called peeping penguins. it came from max fleischer's fleischer studios which is most famous to me for its relation to betty boop. the archive includes other betty boop cartoons which you can navigate to thru his name if you look at this cartoon: http://www.archive.org/details/Peeping_Penguins_1937
for the penguin crowd here's the link to all about penguins. http://allaboutpenguins.ning.com/
and finally my musical note. i continue to love american routes for its wonderful weekly show which acts out its new orleans base in an amazing array of real american music. i end up catching it on saturday afternoons often. to see if its on check on the my public radio link on the right and see what else is on on public radio on the net.

2008 PENGO PICS FROM LITTLE BLUE [PICTURED ABOVE]

xmas day 2008. bernie and i have been cooking the official meal very slowly and deliberately. it seemed like a good time to organize my 2008 penguin pics and publish them. so i decided a slideshow added here would do so and allow those less enamored of penguins to look quickly and get a giggle or two. the problem is this required me to learn and practice. and it turns out i'm gonna have to do just a little more learning and trying so for now i can only offer a quick link to my slide show. but i'll keep working on getting it over here for easy viewing.

http://bwendo.smugmug.com/photos/swfpopup.mg?AlbumID=6915682&AlbumKey=Cvndz

friday nite and team penguin works quietly to prepare for saturday

somewhere in new york state, jen, the world's most dedicated penguin computer artist prepares the cartoon that will bring joy to her fans on saturday morning. we've never met and probably never will but we each enjoy the other's expression of appreciation of penguins. it seems the least i can do is a little penguin inserting while she does the same but with originality.

actually i probably should consider the holiday season a celebration of penguins. i don't really qualify for hanukkah, christmas or kwanzaa. but it is the time when the penguins appear magically everywhere. so why not offer up some of my own.

first i lead you to jen's blog site that shows both this week's cartoons and some of the wonderful and usually hilarious penguin products she sells online. http://pengcognito.blogspot.com/

then i offer one youtube evil penguin xmas thing and two ads with nice penguin tales. the bbc ad offers the penguin fantasy - flying. the guiness is a special story 2 penguin buddies with a nice surprise ending. at the bottom of youtube you can end up watching related videos there are links to other related videos just like you you were viewing the video directly on youtube. these are not part of my official show but the guiness ad leads you to two of my favorites which i can recommend - the penguin mother on the ice with her yellow [?] chicks and the penguin and the ostrich. if you liked the evil penguin one you might well get into some of the other down on christmas videos like 'depressing times funny christmas card' and the country classic ' dammit i'm vixen.






i'll offer an link to a mastercard christmas ad with a penguin star even tho they have the bad taste to keep youtube from allowing them to circulate the ad. sounds like more free advertising to me, but i don't have a mastercard. to quote my words to master card in the comments section on youtube: 'there's some things you don't need money to buy.' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liGKqk3Ay1g