Wienerdog Wednesday, year end edition

Here's hoping your New Year's celebrations are the chillest ever. And that 2016 brings you all that's good. 

Monday Meh, Winter? Edition

It's the last Monday Meh for 2015, and I'm still wondering where winter is. Artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo personified winter in this 16th century painting -- which could benefit from a dusting of snow, methinks. 

Wienerdog Wednesday, Season's Greetings Edition

For your holiday viewing pleasure, here are three dachshund pups about to get into some merry mischief. This card, dating from 1908, with its generic "Season's Greetings!" shows that the War Against Christmas is nothing new. 

Which reminds me. To try and make my office space more festive, I brought in a miniature Christmas tree, decorated with lights and little animal figurines and toys. One day my boss came in, looked at the tree, and told me I wasn't a very good Athiest, having a Christmas tree on display. My reply? "You're not a very good Christian if you think a tree has anything to do with Christmas.'

As far as I know, I will still have a job to return to after the New Year. Darn.

Find some joy in this season, however you celebrate it. Scooter Pie says so.

Monday Meh, Childhood Mehmory Edition

I had this very edition of the Hans Christian Anderson tale, "The Little Match Girl," when I was young. The illustrations captivated me, while leaving me fairly ignorant of the horribleness of the story. Basically, a street "urchin" goes out on a cold winter day to sell matches to help support her family. Poorly dressed -- her slippers were too big and fell off, and her hand-me-down rags were no match for the biting cold and snow -- the LMG lights one of the precious matches for warmth. Her hypothermic hallucinations lead her to a wonderous holiday feast, and the LMG freezes to death under the illusion that her dear grandmother has come to take her somewhere where she'll be warm and well-fed. 

What the hell kind of Christmas story is that? 

Never mind -- there are plenty of political and religious entities today that want us to believe that sacrifice and suffering is the way to a glorious future. And the holiday season is an amalgam of Scroogery and commercial excess that leaves me feeling cold in spite of the unseasonably warm temperatures in my neck of the woods. But I have just 3 days to manufacture some Christmas spirit, so I'll be in the kitchen baking cookies and hoping that Santa gives all the naughty, naughty capitalists  exactlly what they deserve this year. 

Wienerdog Wednesday, steampunk edition

Just like its warm-blooded counterparts, the mechanical version of the dachshund is driven by the belly-motor. 

Monday Meh

Gray Tree, Piet Mondrian (1911)

This painting reminded me of the view out my window yesterday, the morning fog rendering everything monochromatic. I'm a fan of black and white photography, but you hardly ever see black and white paintings. Especially from an artist like Mondrian whose more familiar works pop with primary colors interspersed among the black and white outlines. 

In spite of my having the advantage of a college art history course on my transcript, and being privileged to have grown up around artists and art and museums, I would not have guessed that "Gray Tree" was a Mondrian. Sometimes I like having my pre-conceptions shaken up. It's a shame that too many fellow citizens are just fine with their dearly held ideas about too many things and people. 

More art, less hate.

Wienerdog Wednesday, Dogma Edition

Hey, Jerry Falwell, Jr. -- don't you know you should leave dogma to the dogs?

Monday Meh, ennui edition

Sadness, Erté

Feeling so, so weary of all the idiocy and knee-jerking and fear-mongering that assaults our senses from the media and anybody else who feels the need to spew their hateful, ignorant rantings about how to "fix" the problem of innocents being killed by gunfire by giving more people more guns and assuming that everyone is the enemy. 

I wish I had a sense for how and if and when it will all change . . . . for the better.

Wienerdog Wednesday, carnivore edition

Everyone knows I love Scooter Pie, our darling doxie. I have even, on occasion, cooked special food for her when her pancreatitis was flaring up. However, I didn't let her know that in Portland there was a special store selling  "Meat for Cats and Dogs" -- a shop I happened to spot while out for lunch one day during my recent stay in the Rose City for a conference. I can appreciate wanting the best for our four-footed family members, but am not quite sure why they need their own grocery stores . . . . 

Then again, isn't PetSmart their version of WalMart?