Sometimes you just want to hide your head away. . .

As always, remember to check out The Ark on Fridays and the Carnival of the Cats on Sundays for a round up of the best and latest pet blogging photos.


Larry McMurtry gets asked really dumb questions in an interview touting his latest, The Colonel and Little Missie : Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, and the Beginnings of Superstardom in America,and runs out of patience:

What, exactly, do you think cowboys represent, other than the triumph of alpha males?

Cowboys are a symbol of a freer time, when people could go all the way from Canada to Mexico without seeing a fence. They stand for good ol' American values, like self-reliance.

Maybe some American values, but you can't say that cowboys were ever interested in spreading democracy.

No, they were interested in spreading fascism.

If you put it that way, how do you explain your own fascination with Buffalo Bill?

I never thought about it. (NYTimes)

Hee. Of course, my favorite part is when he goes off on Pres. Bush's ranch:

"I find it hard to think of it as a ranch. Crawford is basically a suburb of Waco, and I have been through it a million times. The president has this obsession, which he inherited from Reagan, of brush clearing. I don't get it. What do you get when you clear brush? You get a photograph of yourself with a chain saw and a cowboy hat."

And, of course by now we've all seen the list of the ten most dangerous books of the 19th and 20th century and all the runners-up as selected by the conservatives. (Human Events) The only thing keeping me from hiding my head away in shame since I've read exactly one book on the list is that that one is the most dangerous of all! I fared better with the supplementary list. Decide for yourself which books are the most dangerous.

LW and I were trying to remember yesterday where we'd heard N.C. Congressman Walter Jones' name before. She thought maybe he was the one who thought rape victims couldn't get pregnant, but I googled last night and found out he's the one responsible for having the menus in DC changed to say "freedom fries" instead of "french fries." Perhaps we'll remember his name this time round: he's introduced a bill in response to children in Wilmington having access in the library to King and King:

"Dubbed the Parental Empowerment Act of 2005, the measure if passed would create local review boards of five to 15 parents who would have the authority to review and make recommendations on elementary school library and classroom materials before they could be purchased. Under the law, introduced May 11, states that failed to put the parental panels in place would lose all federal education funding." (School Library Journal)

Jones said, “I can’t understand why parents [can’t] have the power to oversee what children are reading."

See, I was under the impression they could. I just didn't think they should have the power to decide what other parents' kids should read.

Pardon me while I go listen to Dwight Yoakam's "Dangerous Man". . .