The Office: a drama in 14 frames

Baby koala: cutest video I've ever seen!

Dick, Jane and Puff: killer kitten

One of my more sadistic animations. As usual, people jump and down on each other a lot. Bambi it ain't, but it was still hard for me to do. Took forever.

Pettin' in the dark: pre-Code Hollywood

Gorgeous, in a pre-Code sort of way. The "little boy" is really a dwarf named Billy Barty.

Girls just wanna . . .

A partial list of recent books with "girl" in the title

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
Twenties Girl by Sophie Kinsella
The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson
The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale

The Girl You Left Behind by Jojo Moyes
Don’t Judge A Girl by Her Cover by Ally Carter
The House Girl by Tara Conklin
The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey
This Girl by Colleen Hoover
The Windup Girl by Paulo Bacigalupi
The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen
The Girls by Emma Cline 

Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler 

Local Girls by Caroline Zancan 

The Second Girl by David Swinson 

All the Missing Girls by Megan Miranda

The Girl In the Ice by Robert Bryndza 

Girl In the Afternoon by Serena Burdick 

The Girls In the Garden by Lisa Jewell 

The Girl Before by Rena Olsen 

Little Girl Gone by Gerry Schmitt 

Sarong Party Girls by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan 

Radio Girls by Sarah-Jane Stratford 

The Lost Girls by Heather Young 

Girl In the Blue Coat by Monica Hesse 

The Girl In the Red Coat by Kate Hamer 

If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo 

Nowhere Girl by Susan Strecke 

The Girl From the Savoy by Hazel Gaynor 

Beware That Girl by Teresa Toten 

The Crow Girl by Erik Axl Sund 

Girl In the Shadows by Gwenda Bond 

Girl Against the Universe by Paula Stokes

Girl About Town by Adam Shankman and Laura L. Sullivan
Girl In Pieces by Kathleen Glasgow 

Girl on a Plane by Miriam Moss 

The German Girl by Armando Lucas Correa 

Girls on Fire by Robin Wasserman

Girl in the Dark by Marian Pauw

MY list of books with "girl" in the title"

Girl on a Spit

Girl on a Stick

Girls! Girls! Girls!

Girls Galore

Girls in Titles
More Girls in Titles
MORE Girls in Titles
Girls in Titles Trilogy: Part Six
Title Girls

Cash-Grab Girls

Movie Adaptation Girls
Film Option Girls

Girl in the Purple Coat

Girl in the Pink Coat

Girl in the Maroon Coat

Girl in the Tartan Mackintosh

Girl in the Black Rubber Wellies

The Goose Girl

The Cow Girl

The Gorilla Girl

The Various-Species-Because-It's-So-Popular Girl

Concubine Girl
Kinkubine Girl

Slutty but Somehow Still Classy Girl
Sexual-Favors-Performing But Only To Save Her Life Girl

Girl Whose Sexual Escapades All Work Out In The End Because She Gets Married And Rich

Bondage Girl

Bandage Girl

Nurse Girl
Cursed Girl

Literary Girl

Library Girl

Galloway Girl

Ghomeshi Girl

Tie-Me-Up-And-Hit-Me-Because-I-Like-It Girl 

What's The Name of That Teddy Bear? Girl
Road Kill Girl

Never Mind Why We Need It In The Title, It Sells Books So Just Shut Up And Buy It Girl

Call Girl (Anything You Want)

The Fortune Cookie Girl

The Fortunate Cookie Girl
The Unfortunate Cookie Girl

The Girl Guide Cookie Girl

The Vaguely Asian Girl
The Blatant Exploitation Girl

The Strangely Enigmatic European Girl With Rosy Cheeks And A Weird Accent Who Turns Out To Be A Man (Not A Boy)

The Anything But WASP Because It's Boring Girl

(and oh, I'm so tired now and must lie down).

POST-POST. I must stop researching this subject, because I just keep finding dozens and dozens more. The following list may or may not be satiric. Some of them sound just plain DUMB. The Girl With the Caterpillar Eyebrows? The Girl with the Funny Buttons? Jesus. Why didn't MY books get anywhere? I guess I'm just too old to be a whore. And too honest. 

This is, by the way, only a tiny fragment of the full list. Do ALL of these sell, I wonder? They must sell a hell of a lot better than my stuff. 

The Girl Who Lived on the Moon, by Frank Delaney The Girl Who Couldn’t Smile, by Shane Dunphy The Girl Who Could Silence the Wind, by Meg Medina The Girl Who Dreamed of Ships, by Beverly Scofield The Girl Who Wears Gumamela Flower, by Heidy Ramos The Girl Who Loves Horses, by Diana Vincent The Girl Who Fished With a Worm, by Harry Groome The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, by Simon Mawer The Girl With the Dove Tattoo, by Brian D. McLaren The Girl With Hair Like the Sun, by Claire Mix and Aaron Miller The Girl With the Killer Heels, by Freddy Hansen The Girl With Borrowed Wings, by Rinsai Rossetti The Girl Who Would Be King, by Kelly Thompson The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There, by Catherynne M. Valente The Girl Who Swam to Atlantis, by Elle Thornton The Girl Who Fell to Earth, by Sophia Al-Maria The Girl Who Gave Her Wish Away, by Sharon Babineau The Girl With the Golden Hair, by Greg Scarlett The Girl Who Was Blue, by Sally O. Lee The Girl With Chipmunk Hands, by Binks and Ruby Begonia The Girl Who Cried Wolf, by Robert Ferrigno The Girl With the Yellow Dress, by Giancarlo Gabbrielli The Girl With a Brave Heart, by Rita Jahanforuz and Vali Mintzi The Girl With No Name: The Incredible Story of a Child Raised by Monkeys, by Marina Chapman with Vanessa James and Lynne Barrett-Lee The Girl Who Blamed the World, by Cindy Mackey and Shirley Chiang The Girl Who Married an Eagle, by Tamar Myers The Girl With the Iron Touch, by Kady Cross The Girl With the Golden Parasol, by Uday Prakash and Jason Grunebaum The Girl Who Cried “Wolf!,” by Nancy Jensen with Nathan Swink The Girl Who Can’t Say No: Bound to the Billionaire, by Ashley Spector The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die, by April Henry The Girl Who Stole My Holocaust: A Memoir, by Noam Chayut The Girl Who Loved Camellias: The Life and Legend of Marie Duplessis, by Julie Kavanagh The Girl Who Got Out of Bed, by Betsy Childs The Girl Who Wrote Erotica, by Angela Jordan The Girl With the Funny Buttons, by Roberto Di Falco and Silvia Hoefnagels The Girl With the Caterpillar Eyebrows, by Lisa Ditchkoff The Girl Who Bit Back, by E. Earle The Girl With the Sandwich Tattoo, by Dragon Stiegsson The Girl Who Wouldn’t Brush Her Hair, by Kate Bernheimer and Jake Parker The Girl Who Heard Colors, by Marie Harris and Vanessa Brantley Newton The Girl With the Cinnamon Twist, by Stephen Dennis The Girl Who Grew a Galaxy, by Cherie Dimaline  The Girl Who Sang to the Buffalo: A Child, an Elder, and the Light From an Ancient Sky, by Kent Nerburn The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two, by Catherynne M. Valente The Girl With the Werewolf Tattoo, by Alexia Wells The Girl With the Electric Sunglasses, by G. Dawe The Girl Who Danced in a Blood Soaked Dress, by Craig Campbell The Girl With Nine Lives, by E. Earle The Girl Who Was Loved, by Annabelle Peep The Girl With the Thistle Tattoo, by Patricia Green The Girl Who Thought Too Much, by Rosa Edwards The Girl With the Pink Bandanna, by Roberto Di Falco and Silvia Hoefnagels The Girl Who Never Came Back, by Amy Cross The Girl With the Curves, by Iris Deorre

This is the way the world ends

\

A horse named Blue

How Scientology ruined my life

It happened again this morning.

I say "again" because it was "again", the second time I've run into this problem - a problem so bizarre that no one I've asked seems to know anything about it.

I was tooling through Facebook as usual, trying in vain to skip the ubiquitous Donald Trump articles, when bung. The thing froze, I mean Facebook. I thought: fine, it happens, I'll just wait it out, it'll unfreeze in a second.

Then.

It came up again, a warning so ominous it hit me in the pit of the stomach.

It was a little box at the top of the page, and it went something like:

WARNING. Your files are unresponsive. If you wish to wait until they are responsive again, click WAIT. If not, click KILL and the files will be KILLED.

They listed the three most recent files I had opened. At the top was my Facebook page.

There were two rather large, strange-looking buttons: on the right, a WAIT; on the left, a KILL. Beside the KILL was the most bizarre graphic ever seen: it looked like a cartoon "file" (a paper file, literally) that had been nuked and was now dead. It was lying in a heap, and its eyes were two black x's. Smoke, or something, was coming out of it.

I cannot tell you how ominous and horrible it looked.

What do you do when you see a thing like that? Everything was frozen, I couldn't get out of there. I had no idea if the "kill button" would really work if I clicked on it. I was even tempted to click on it, to find out. But I knew that it could be catastrophic.

So I clicked WAIT, and eventually the box went away and things went back to "normal", or as normal as they could be after a Facebook hijacking.

What gives me the queasies is that nobody, but nobody knows what this is. I couldn't find anything close to the nasty little "killed file" graphic. I did find some information, after some digging, about what it means to "kill" on the internet. It's not quite what I thought, fortunately. To fix it, there's some sort of program you can buy online:

A simple-to-use program that offers support for context menu integration for helping you removes files securely from the computer

File Kill is a lightweight software application that helps you delete data permanently from your computer.

If you opt for a normal deletion process, you should take into account that your sensitive data may be retrieved using recovery tools, so you are still exposed to data leakage issues.

This is why you need dedicated utilities, like File Kill, for making sure the information is wiped out securely from your system.

File Kill offers support for context menu integration, so you can easily select the files to be processed.

The file deletion process can be carried out using of the multiple pass methods (e.g. one, three, thirty-five). What’s more, you are allowed to stop, pause, or resume the wiping task.

File Kill needs up to several minutes to complete a deletion operation with a high number of passes, and it stresses up the CPU and memory, so the overall performance of the computer may be burned.

Since it doesn’t require much computer knowledge to work with this tool, even rookies can set up the dedicated parameters with minimum effort.

However, more experienced users may find it pretty inconvenient to work with a tool that doesn’t offer support for powerful deletion algorithms, such as Gutmann, which is able to securely overwrite the contents of files, and the well-known sanitization algorithm, DoD 5220.22-M, just to name a few suggestions.

To sum things up, File Kill seems to be the right choice in case you are looking for an easy-to-use program that helps you delete data securely in just a few steps. Thanks to its straightforward approach, it can be mastered by beginners and professionals alike.

Secure shredder Shred file Secure deletion Shredder Shred Erase Eraser

File Kill was reviewed by (X)

DOWNLOAD File Kill 0.8 for WindowsCHANGELOG for File Kill 0.8

TOP ALTERNATIVES FREE

Windows Installer Clean Up Utility

Autorun Eater

Direct X Eradicator

Nero General Clean Tool

Pocket Killbox

TOP ALTERNATIVES PAID

Driver Cleaner.NET

DirectX Happy Uninstall

Webroot SecureAnywhere Internet Security Plus (DISCOUNT: 50% OFF)

Powerful Cookies

Raxso Drive Magix

                                                                 "Short as Shit"

And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 

And oh, yes. Give me File Kill any day. It just sounds so friendly! My ass. It's about as friendly as an organized Scientology harassment campaign. The kind where they never let you see your mother again. Such terms: Autorun Eater, Direct X Eradicator! Not to mention the Pocket Killbox (nice and portable, they should do an infomercial on it for KVOS), Direct X Happy Uninstall, and Powerful Cookies. What do they put in those cookies, do you think?

I thought it was called "delete". I really did. If you wanted to get rid of something, you deleted it! Oh, the police could retrieve it if they needed to, but I didn't need to worry about that. I assumed that if it was still around, it was up in the "cloud" somewhere, wherever that is, but it didn't bother me because I had no criminal record. I'm too boring to bother with.

Now this. For the second time. And I did nothing to bring it on.

Or. . . 

I said some bad things about David Miscavige, I admit. I said he was short. REALLY short, which he is. Short as shit. Which he is! Tom Cruise is five-foot-six, and look at how he TOWERS over that little dickweed. 

He's a prick, but everybody says so. They wouldn't come after me. Would they? Would they really kill my Facebook page?

But this cannot be from Facebook. The warning even looked weird. Not Facebookian at all. And that cartoon! What a piece of shit THAT was. Is it a prank? A virus? A particularly nasty form of clickbait? Just a way to scare the jeezus out of me on a Monday morning?

I wish I had a screenshot of this thing, it was so evil you wouldn't believe it. Why would this even come up? Why would I want to kill ANYTHING, let alone my (I assume) entire Facebook page? All it did was freeze for half a minute or so. 

Stuff freezes. It doesn't mean you DID anything. 

I rebooted, but felt nervous that this could come up again. It had kept some kind of record of the other two pages I had recently gone on. But so fucking what, Google keeps records on ALL that shit! Come to that, how could you "kill" a webpage that exists, that is still there? It's not possible. 

Sounds like something the CIA might do, or Kirstie Alley or John Travolta, or someone worse. If there is anybody worse. 

ANTICLIMACTIC UPDATE. After working on it literally all day, I did finally find out what the hell this is. It's something to do with Google Chrome, not Facebook, but it's too technical for me to begin to describe.

These things are called Kill Pages, which sounds like Mafia rather than Scientology.  The thing that came up looked something like this:

That's pretty much what I remembered. I don't know why I wasn't able to find this up to now, but I may have used the wrong search terms. "Unresponsive" seemed to be the key word.

Nothing to do with Scientology. Damn! It's Google Chrome. What an anticlimax. I was pretty much right about that poor nuked file, however, the asterisk-like eyes and smoke or steam floating in the air. It's toast.

I found all sorts of instructions as to how to fix this. I'm going to ask my son. I never again want to read the instructions "KILL THEM" while I'm trying to enjoy my morning coffee and a bit of Facebook.

There's a man with a gun over there

By the later 1930s, most U.S. journalists realized their mistake in underestimating Hitler or failing to imagine just how bad things could get. (Though there remained infamous exceptions, like Douglas Chandler, who wrote a loving paean to “Changing Berlin” for National Geographic in 1937.) Dorothy Thompson, who judged Hitler a man of “startling insignificance” in 1928, realized her mistake by mid-decade when she, like Mowrer, began raising the alarm.

“No people ever recognize their dictator in advance,” she reflected in 1935. “He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument [of] the Incorporated National Will.” Applying the lesson to the U.S., she wrote, “When our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American.” (Smithsonian Magazine)

Tragopan strikes out!

(Note that the satyr tragopan, not the brightest of birds, is extravagantly performing his courtship ritual for a log.)

Satyr tragopan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Tragopan satyra)

Satyr tragopan

Tragopan satyra from Pangolakha WLS, East Sikkim, India

Conservation status


Near Threatened (IUCN 3.1)[1]
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Galliformes
Family: Phasianidae
Subfamily: Phasianinae
Genus: Tragopan
Species: T. satyra
Binomial name
Tragopan satyra
(Linnaeus, 1758)


The satyr tragopan (Tragopan satyra) also known as the crimson horned pheasant, is a pheasant found in the Himalayan reaches of India, Tibet, Nepal and Bhutan. They reside in moist oak and rhododendron forests with dense undergrowth and bamboo clumps. They range from 8,000 to 14,000 feet in summer and 6,000 feet in winter. The male crimson horned pheasant is about 70 cm long.

Captive bird from Osaka, Japan.

When it is mating season, male satyr tragopans grow blue horns and a gular wattle. When ready to display, they will inflate their horns and hide behind a rock, waiting for females to pass by. When one does, they will perform an elaborate and attractive display in front of the females. At the end of the display, the male will stretch to his full height and show off all of his ornaments.

Females are brown. Males are usually red with blue, black, and white spots and freckles.

Oh, bliss! Oh, rapture!

   

Cheesy gifs: best in show

I didn't make these gifs, by the way. Some of them are fairly sophisticated, like this PicMix. MY PicMixes don't look like this. They look like they were made with mud and a Popsicle stick. Note the rather creepy way the Madonna-like figure blinks. Her hair moves, as does the head of the kitten. These things often have cats looking out the window. It's part of their cheesitude.

Most of the more scenic gifs I've collected (mostly from Facebook nostalgia pages, not that I ever go on them) aren't included here because they're too nice, I mean too normal, but the sheer busy-ness of this one makes it qualify as officially cheesy. The maker of it probably thought, the more stuff is moving, the better. I don't know what half of it is.  And oh, look - there's a kitten! See it? Its tail is moving and everything.

This one is a masterpiece. A sleigh with two horses just materializes like Aladdin rising out of his lamp, then slides rigidly straight down the hill as if the horses had snowboards attached to their hooves. Which, perhaps, they do. 

This one has very good intentions, and I have to confess I have no idea how it was done. Makes my own efforts look pretty crude. It is, however, extremely brief, maybe 1 1/2 seconds long, and frantic. And note the small ginger cat pawing at the window. Closely resembles the small ginger cat of gif #1.

Maybe I should dispense with my primitive flip-pictures and start doing stuff like this. Trouble is, lots of people are generating these things already. A Saint Bernard rocking a baby's cradle with its paw is some sort of pinnacle of cheesitude. Those things in the air bother me, though. Bugs? Dog dander? Who knows what.

I don't understand this one, at all. The poor fellow must have dropped his briefcase into the ocean. Or something. What's that white thing, why the dead flowers? Too poetical by half. Reminds me of an old commercial for Dristan, where a guy goes to Arizona in his briefcase.

I remember when this sort of thing was all you could make. Sparklies or whatever they were called. Gifs had not been invented yet. Blingee has ceased to work for me, and in any case was extremely limited. PicMix animations often don't move very much - animals look as if they are suffering seizures or death throes. This one is merely oversparkled. Nothing much else is happening in it. It would have been a nice cheesy touch if the hands of the clock moved around.

There's that kitten again, pawing at the window! More of a tabby this time. Birds or something go endlessly surging up. I keep thinking I see someone sitting out on the porch, but it couldn't be. There's simply no one out there (Twilight Zone music).

Similarly, we have these nymphets with things buzzing around them and the air kind of pulsating. At least there are no cats.

Why is it that when I make a PicMix, I can't get a fairy to dance behind my cookies? I am not sure what the fairy is doing there during coffee break, and I don't understand the wild geese very well either, because they never seem to get anywhere, but they look sort of nice. The whole thing is nice, but a little strange.

I've saved the cheesiest (and creepiest) for last. The little girl seems to sort of seethe in the frame, warping oddly. Reminds me of those optical illusion effects I suffered from earlier today from staring at a YouTube video meant to induce hallucinations. (It did.) A dog's tail shimmies back and forth. And lo! we see another kitten, lying on the sofa under a blanket, and seething in time with the little girl. That makes five cats, and only three dogs, so the cats win. 

Why can't I make gifs as cool as these??

The way Bentley drinks is weird!

The way Bentley drinks is weird. He must like the taste of wet paw.

Bentley is the best cat ever.