Jacques Brel

I always loved this Jacques Brel song.

Tommy Wallach.
About four.

We held hands - that's half way to first base or somethig - that's a gound out at first base.

If I could be for only an hour
If I could be for an hour every day
If I could be for just one little hour

Cute, cute, cute in a stupid-ass way.

Maybe it's the way I smell, or something

An earlier sighting.

...Or they're thick around here. But I keep running into these guys, to my delight.

I met another coyote this morning. Before dawn, I stopped in the park to change the tape in the Walkman (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) and saw the pup.

Between pishing, quiet baby-talk and jiggled fingers I held Coyote's attention and curiosity for a good five minutes. Coyote approached to within a meter, almost near enough to touch - and I would have. It ducked behind a tree, but kept peeking around.

Bad human! I really shouldn't coax so and encourage a disregard for fear of people - it could only result in bad consequences for a wild animal. But coyote was just so damn cute.

Bookends

Boys kissing: Taj and friend

Taj and friend, originally uploaded by Leonard John Matthews.

Boys kissing, at Dirty John Bonny.

Boys kissing

Cindi Lou kissing her new boy,
originally uploaded by Rebecca and Keath.

Well, actually it's a girl on the right, but the pirate pajamas are just too cool to pass up.

Boys kissing at Dirty John Bonny.

Butt art

Via my friend Steve.

Southern state, butt, school, civil rights.... seems to be keywords for DJB

Butterfly
With permission, thanks to Stan Murmur.

Art teacher Stephen Murmer was fired in January after Chesterfield County, Virginia Public Schools officials learned that he uses his buttocks and other "southern" parts as sort of rubber stamps to create his canvases.

This isn't the drunken office-party sitting on the the copier machine stuff, but rather a bit of performance art that also results in charming images that can stand on their own.

A lawsuit ensues.

... an ACLU lawyer who is one of Murmer's attorneys, said the school board fired Murmer for art created on his own time that he "scrupulously kept private from his students." He adopted the pen name to ensure that his students didn't discover his private work ...

"This lawsuit is about a corrupt little county in Virginia and making sure they can't do this to anyone else ever again," he said.

Good luck with that.

Linkys:
The Associated Press.
Butts at Dirty John Bonny.

[Update: AP link fixed.]

Editorial

Damn me if these computer contraptions haven't gotten clever. I just stumbled my way to Dirty John Bonny rendered in French. Linky.

Un garçon perdu qui veut se joindre à des pirates ...

Pirates, de la science, a trouvé des images, des garçons perdus, et les lapins et les choses.

As near as I can tell, it got most of it right. Even though "bunnies" got turned into generic rabbits.

And "What the fuck?" got turned into "What the kiss?" But there well may be some slang I'm missing here.

Impressive still.

Snowball

Via my friend Wolfie, and with a hat tip.

About one.

Snowball is a medium sulphur crested Eleanora cockatoo and he loves to dance and sing. He loves the Back Street Boys. No one taught Snowball to dance...he just heard this song and suddenly felt like dancing. We're all jealous because he can outdance each one of us...nobody likes a show off! When he's really in the mood, he dances and sings. And at the end of the performance he takes a bow or two or twenty!! Enjoy the show.

Birds can be so amazing. Maybe it has to do with flying (I'd like to think so) but they seem to use small brain matter more efficiently than the rest of us vertebrates.

African Gray Parrots can count, and crows can make and use tools. I once knew a man and a cockatail. The bird was downright jealous, and hated me.



Linky:
Yes, it appears to be real: Bird Lovers Only Rescue here.

Pesky banned books

Pesky Banned Books, originally uploaded by Pesky Library.

Wow, banned books and pirates!

The Pesky Library used ALA's theme of pirates for our Banned Books display. ALA posters and bookmarks were also on display around the library.
Books in this display include:

Anaya, Rudolfo . Bless Me, Ultima
Angelou, Maya . I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Anonymous . Go Ask Alice
Atwood, Margaret . The Handmaid's Tale
Auel, Jean M. .The Plains of Passage
Auel, Jean M. . The Valley of Horses
Auel, Jean M. . The Clan of the Cave Bear
Auel, Jean M. . The Mammoth Hunters
Cormier, Robert . The Chocolate War
Crutcher, Chris . Athletic Shorts
Ellis, Bret Easton . American Psycho
Follett, Ken . The Pillars of the Earth
George, Jean . Julie of the Wolves Treasury
Golding, William . Lord of the Flies
Guest, Judith . Ordinary People
Handford, Martin . Where's Waldo?
Huxley, Aldous . Brave New World
Keyes, Daniel . Charlie and I
King, Stephen . Cujo
King, Stephen . The Dead Zone
King, Stephen . Carrie
Lee, Harper . To Kill A Mockingbird
Madaras, Lynda . The What's Happening To My Body? Book for Boys
Madaras, Lynda . The What's Happening To My Body? Book for Girls
Mathabane, Mark . Kaffir Boy
Morrison, Toni . Beloved
Morrison, Toni . The Bluest Eye
Myers,Walter Dean . Fallen Angels
Paterson, Katherine . Bridge to Terabithia
Rodriguez, Luis J. . Always Running
Rowling, J. K. . Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Rowling, J. K. . Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
Rowling, J. K. . Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Rowling, J. K. . Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Rowling, J. K. . Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Rowling, J. K. . Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Rowling, J. K. . Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Salinger, J. D. . The Catcher in the Rye
Schwartz, Alvin . Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
Silverstein,Shel . A Light in the Attic
Steinbeck, John . Of Mice and Men
Stine, R. L. . I Live In Your Basement
Stine, R. L. . Under the Magician's Spell
Stine, R. L. . Night in Werewolf Woods
Stine, R. L. . The Curse of the Creeping Coffin
Stine, R. L. . Werewolf Skin
Twain, Mark . The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Twain, Mark . The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Vonnegut, Kurt . Slaughterhouse Five
Walker, Alice . The Color Purple
Wright, Richard . Native Son

An excellent reading list for teen and adult alike. But for all the storming the ramparts I try to do around here, I have to admit that I've only read about half the cited books.


Where's Waldo? What the fuck?

[Update:
The Waldo stuff is apparently right out of Urban Legend territory. The story is that there was a (gasp) bare boobie in one of the intricate, tiny illustrations.
Like if you hold it upside-down and squint real hard. Like Paul is dead, for anyone old enough to remember.

Linkys:
Waldo
Paul is dead.
]

Idiots protect kids from Shakespeare, penises

MESA, Ariz. -- It was supposed to be a two-hour Shakespearean comedy attended by 700 Higley Unified School District sixth-through 12th graders.

But it was not to be.

About 40 minutes into the play, a district official halted the show Monday at the Higley Center for the Performing Arts.

About one and half.

The production is a parody and revue performed by three actors who cover the oeuvre, including the sonnets, with Titus Andronicus as a cooking show, Othello as a rap song.

"The only thing I can think of that she might have found objectionable is that there is the use of the word penis, twice," Bartz said. He said if Kissane had objections, the cast could have made adjustments, but weren't given the chance.

Like change it to "wee-wee." And cut out Falstaff entirely.



Linkys:
CBS 5, Arizona.
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare(abridged) at WikiPedia.
Related, Banned Books at Dirty John Bonny.


Exit, pursued by a bear.
The Winter's Tale.

Happy Banned Books Week

An actual Harry Potter book burning.
A reprise from Dirty John Bonny.

One thing that the fundie Christians, the advocates of abstinence-only sex education, the creationists, and other loonies have in common is the magical thinking that if you can suppress the reporting of a fact or idea then the reality will somehow go away.

The most-challenged book of 2006, according to the American Library Asossciation, was And Tango Makes Three.

There's another theme running here, that book-banners don't actually read what they're railing against. This title alone is enough to get knickers in a twist: If there are now three, then before there were two, and that can't be allowed.

The story seemed like a surefire hit for children. A pair of penguins take care of an egg that isn’t theirs and then raise the baby penguin, after it hatches, as their own.How heartwarming. And who doesn’t love penguins?

Plenty of parents, it turns out, when both penguin parents are male.


From the Chicaro Tribune via CommonDreams.

I've covered a lot of this crap here at Dirty John Bonny, and it's hard to pick out the best links.

There's that crazy woman in Gwinnett County, Georgia, trying to ban Harry Potter, and the teenage boys who were "disturbed" after discovering a lesbian sex book in their local library, and scrotums, and the unbelievably tone-deaf idiot trying to ban Fahrenheit 451.

Slipping off Top-of-the-pops banned book list was The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.

Taking up the banner are Toni Morrison and others. May ye all continue to offend.

So thank you, librarians. It's sort of unfortunate that this is your biggest week.

Banned Books, at the American Library Association.

Last year's post is here.