Repressed passive aggressive Chinese anger...

I think the second commercial in the series is my favorite.

Never say no to Panda:

No, this is not a joke...

There are moments when I love PETA.  This is typically when they're all about putting up ads of hot naked women with nothing but strategically placed veggies to cover up their naughty bits.  But most of the time I think they're a bit too radical and border on insane.  Case in point--their new campaign to rename fish as sea kittens:

Whoever was in charge of creating a positive image for fish needs to go right back to working on the Britney Spears account and leave our scaly little friends alone. You've done enough damage, buddy. We've got it from here. And we're going to start by retiring the old name for good. When your name can also be used as a verb that means driving a hook through your head, it's time for a serious image makeover. And who could possibly want to put a hook through a sea kitten?

Personally, I kind of hate cats, so this campaign actually probably has the opposite effect of what they're proposing.  

Now I'm hungry for sushi. 

If my life was the game of Life ...

... I would be losing. Two weeks ago today, I ran into a weeks worth of setbacks.

After gaining some unwanted weight, I had been running for exercise in the morning, and I really started to feel the benefits. I decided that on this particular morning I would do some sprint intervals. It was the morning after a thunderstorm, and I quickly approached a tree branch that needed to be skirted. I skirted it, but in the process my foot hit the edge of the pavement. I then skidded along the ground writhing in agony because I knew I had sprained my ankle. Hoping up quickly, I decided to assess the damage while moving. While walking 1/3rd of a mile uphill to my house I realized it was a bad one. The x-rays and the doctor told me that I broke my 5th metatarsal and sprained two ligaments and one tendon. Bummer. This amounts to me wearing a boot that comes up to my knee to immobilize everything. What I really love though is the padding on the inside of the boot. It is essentially foam cushioning surrounded by flannel. I love it when it is 100 degrees outside. Setback Number 1.

Setback Number 2 is directly related to Number 1. We had a weekend vacation planned for the beach, and this last weekend we had another vacation planned for Universal Studios Theme parks in Orlando (rabbit trail ... the new Simpson's ride was a lot of fun). We opted to stay the course and go on both vacations. There is nothing quite like probing for treasures in the sand with crutches, and is there anything that epitomizes walking and standing more than going to a theme park.

Setback Number 3 is also related to Number 1. When we arrived at the beach, I thought it might be nice to elevate my swollen ugliness. Within 30 minutes I received a phone call from our dog sitter. To protect my dogs identity, I will call him Bonham. Bonham had escaped from the clutches of our dog sitter while she was on her way in the gate to play with him. He ran straight for the 6 lane highway and proceeded to get hit by the bumper, tagged by the front wheels, and run over by the rear wheels of a Ryder truck. Bonham is not one of the smartest dogs I have ever met, but I think he could be the strongest. He made it out alive, and only lost his tail. Plus the sitter and her friend still had to chase him down after that. (This is the second time he has been hit and run over by a car with no major problems.) Setback 4a was that her friend got hit by a car in the process. He is fine. Setback 4b ... I will just say that emergency vet care is damn expensive. Major piss off number 1 ... the people who ran over my dog didn't even slow down. The fu&kers just kept on driving.

I don't remember the game of Life much, but the next thing is like drawing a card that says you have to move back one more space on top of everything else. While at the beach feeling pretty useless and confused about the dog situation, I decided to take my daughter for a little swing in the hammock. Major piss off number 2 ... the hammock broke and we go plummeting to the ground where I bruised my back and rear-end pretty good. Thankfully she was okay.

Last major piss off is the fact that I am getting fat again and can't do things like this ...

"A heartwarming story" from my e-mail inbox today...

In 1986, Peter Davies was on holiday in Kenya after graduating from Northwestern University. On a hike through the bush, he came across a young bull elephant standing with one leg raised in the air. The elephant seemed distressed, so Peter approached it very carefully.

He got down on one knee and inspected the elephant's foot and found a large piece of wood deeply embedded in it. As carefully and as gently as he could, Peter worked the wood out with his hunting knife, after which the elephant gingerly put down its foot. The elephant turned to face the man, and with a rather curious look on its face, stared at him for several tense moments. Peter stood frozen, thinking of nothing else but being trampled. Eventually the elephant trumpeted loudly, turned, and walked away. Peter never forgot that elephant or the events of that day.

Twenty years later, Peter was walking through th e Chicago Zoo with his teenaged son. As they approached the elephant enclosure, one of the creatures turned and walked over to near where Peter and his son Cameron were standing. The large bull elephant stared at Peter, lifted its front foot off the ground, then put it down. The elephant did that several times then trumpeted loudly, all the while staring at the man.

Remembering the encounter in 1986, Peter couldn't help wondering if this was the same elephant. Peter summoned up his courage, climbed over the railing and made his way into the enclosure. He walked right up to the elephant and stared back in wonder. The elephant trumpeted again, wrapped its trunk around one of Peter legs and slammed his stupid ass against the railing, killing him instantly.

Probably wasn't the same elephant.

Sometimes when he's lovin' me, he ain't...

Time for some more animal porn.  I'm not sure you call this bestiality, but I guess it's sort of similar. From BBC News:

An Antarctic fur seal has been observed trying to have sex with a king penguin.

The South African-based scientists who witnessed the incident say it is the most unusual case of mammal mating behaviour yet known.

The incident, which lasted for 45 minutes and was caught on camera, is reported in the Journal of Ethology.

The bizarre event took place on a beach on Marion Island, a sub-Antarctic island that is home to both fur seals and king penguins.

Why the seal attempted to have sex with the penguin is unclear. But the scientists who photographed the event speculate that it was the behaviour of a frustrated, sexually inexperienced young male seal.

Equally, it might be been an aggressive, predatory act; or even a playful one that turned sexual.
"At first glimpse, we thought the seal was killing the penguin," says Nico de Bruyn, of the Mammal Research Institute at the University of Pretoria, South Africa.

And all of it caught on film.  Scandalous!

A curly slide would have been even funnier...

This video sort of reminds me of when Firecracker George put my dog on the curly slide at the school playground. Of course, he wasn't a Jack Russell, and probably wouldn't have been this persistent to run UP the slide.

Happy Monday, everyone!

Stop looking at me!

I think this will give me nightmares for the next three weeks:

glumbert - THX for the Eyes

Perhaps this is a sign that big cats with big teeth don't belong in cages...

You've all probably heard or read about the tiger that got loose in the San Francisco Zoo that left one person dead and two others severely injured. Kind of scary that they can't figure out how the animal got out of her enclosure in the first place:

Officials were at a loss to explain how Tatiana got out of the enclosure, which is surrounded by a 15ft (4.5m) wide moat and a 20ft (6m) high wall. The zoo's director of animal care and conservation, Robert Jenkins, said: "There was no way out through the door.

Teleporting tigers perhaps? I don't know, but I'll think twice about going to the zoo now. Then again, large amounts of Cheetos seem to pacify me. Maybe they should try a bag or two with these crazy cats.

This'll warm up that Arctic chill from your heart...

Photo: Norbert Rosing

Bringing things back to the Arctic, here's a little narrated slideshow that proves all animals really just want to play.

I guess he couldn't let his little brother show him up as being a total f*%# up...

I'm not sure if anyone's been paying any attention to the Michael Vick case, but I liked this illustration:

His sentencing is supposed to take place on December 1st. For anyone thinking he deserves leniency, I dare you to follow this link which is NSFW solely for the reason that the picture is really gruesome and may upset anyone who has dogs.

Monkey walking bulldogs with Japanese commentary = video gold...

I thought this video from Japan Probe was a hoot. They always have similar shows like this or some Asian soap opera playing on the big TV when the wife and I go out for Korean food every week. I can't understand a word, but they always seem to put a smile on my face:

I wonder what he'd do on a halfpipe...

I was watching an iPhone commercial and had to find the skateboarding bulldog YouTube video that makes an appearance in it. Little did I know, that Tyson the Skateboarding Bulldog is a pretty famous canine. And he's a pretty darn good skater, too:

Finding a placemat for the meal he just stole out of your trashcan?

Born with a mask and gloves, raccoons must be nature's perfect burglars. What in the world is this guy going to do with that door mat he just stole?