Don't know much about art, but I instantly recognized the painting that this cartoon is based on. They say it's Goya, and I remember it as a painting of Zeus devouring his children. It's driving me crazy that I can't remember WHY I know this. At some point in my childhood I encountered this painting and it burned into my cerebral cortex. (Here's the original.)

I wouldn't call it art, but I just got back from seeing Master and Commander: The Far Side Of The World. It was definitely enjoyable -- the battle scenes especially -- but there were certain Hollywood touches I could have done without. (I'll give Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany passing grades if they promise never to make a movie together again. No, scratch that "together".)

Weird scene on the subway on the way to the movie. A grey-haired Chinese lady started talking inappropriately loudly. After a few seconds I realized she was railing about me, but I didn't understand what she was saying. She just gestured towards where I was standing and occasionally gave me the evil eye. Another grey-haired lady who was sitting next to her got up and moved away. At some point, or maybe it was all along, she seemed to switch to English, and finally she turned to me and said, "Take money, naughty boy. Take money, naughty boy".

Give a hoot. Read a book! Because I found myself only in the middle of three different books, I had to add a fourth; Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. I chose this partly just because it was in the bookcase (Marjorie picked it up a while back), and partly to right a wrong I committed in 11th grade Russian Lit.

I'm surprised this book is ever chosen for high school reading. Not just because the writing can be a bit dry (five pages to describe a dream; another five or so for a letter from mother), but because in the first fifty pages it takes you into the mind of a killer trying to psych himself up to kill someone, and for essentially intellectual reasons. And then, a graphic description of the murder. I'm certainly not saying that it should be banned, but I'm just surprised it's not.

Australia apparently now only accepts immigrants who have ulcers. How else can you explain that our 50+ pages of applications and documents were insufficient -- they want more, as we were informed by mail today. They want more explanations as to hours and employment, profit and loss statements from my business, pictures of us in the shower... Ugh. The sure have swung a long way from their earlier simple entrance requirement of just a criminal record.

Our "Thanksgiving" was indeed successful. We managed to turn out a reasonably tasty turkey breast, as well as mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, fruit cocktail, sweet potato souffle, salad, and a gravy of questionable beginnings but that managed to be good in spite of itself. I even baked a pumpkin pie. And nothing sucked. And we didn't fight during the cooking process. We were amazed at how well it all turned out. It might have even given us the confidence to attempt this again.
I even managed to avoid the hangover (caused by two bottles of red, one bottle of white, and a six pack of Foster's between four people) by drinking a lot of water and taking an aspirin before bed.

Ah, crapulence. Thanksgiving was a success. Even using what amounted to a single toaster oven on steroids, we were able to cook up a complete Thanksgiving meal. My boss and a cow orker of Marjorie's joined us in the gluttony.

The comic strip B.C. I usually find enormously unfunny, but I still read it for the same reason I rubberneck at traffic accidents. The author, Johnny Hart, is getting a lot of heat this week due to this strip. Read it first, and see if you a) get the joke, and b) understand what might be offensive about it.

Give up? The crescent moon is a symbol of Islam. Too, there's the word "SLAM" written vertically, like an I. (Get it? ISLAM.) The strip appeared right in the middle of the holy month of Ramadan as well.

Hart's politics are usually pretty transparent in the strip, and pretty stupid usually. But I have to think this was just an accident. People are saying they don't get the joke, and therefore the only interpretation is an attack on Islam. But I still see a sort of dry humor there, even if there were no moons and SLAM. And come on, the only way to laugh every day at B.C. is with nitrous oxide.