Terminex: The Best Photo of Blago

CHICAGO - DECEMBER 11: Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich leaves his home on December 11, 2008 in Chicago, Illinois. On December 9 Mr. Blagojevich was arrested for allegedly trying to sell the Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama for money and favors among other corruption charges. (Photo by Brian Kersey/Getty Images)

I know these have been shown elsewhere, but they're just too good to not archive here. This is a very lucky photographer, sure, but he took fantastic advantage of the moment and made it both funnier and more artistic by using a narrow depth of focus. I'm giving this one the Larry Downing Memorial Context is Everything Award for the year.

Here's the inferior (but still great) image which preceded the above:

It's fun to see how quickly Kersey had to work to make the decision to focus on the sign. Two sparkley hooves way up!

Jihad Mickey? So What Else is New?

The tale (and the tail! LOL!) of the most kid-friendly jihadist, the Palestinian Terrorist Mickey Mouse has everybody all in a tizzy, but where was the outrage in 1998?

Indeed, the rogue copyright rodent has been active in the radical Islam kiddiesphere for some time now. Don't believe me? Take a look at this unaltered* AP photo and its caption from nine years ago:

Radical Islamic Jihad veteran Etaf Eliyan stands in a Palestinian kindergarten she runs which draws nearly 100 pupils from the surrounding rundown neighborhood in the West Bank town of Bethlehem Thursday, Nov. 12, 1998. Throughout the West Bank and Gaza, the radical groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad operate dozens of schools, medical clinics, sports clubs and women's support groups, a key part of the groups' strategy of building public support, though they are presenting a thorny problem for Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority which has agreed to crack down on Islamic militants. (AP Photo/Jacqueline Larma)

*Seriously, journalists! All I had to do was a search for "Palestinian rodent" at the Associated Press site to find the above. I'm sure it's just the tip of the Terror Toon network.

Photoblogging: Slightly Larger-than-Average Rat Menaces Downtown DC!

Click for bigger!

Few things have the power to send me running back to my office for my camera during my lunch hour, but oversized inflatable novelty rodents with disgusting, diseased stomachs are among them.

I've seen the picket rat before (at Pony Pal™ Joe's place), but the metaphor really confuses me. Supposedly the rat is enlisted when an employer is... well, rat-like. OK, so the rat represents the wayward employer, but then why is the rat holding picket signs? Which side is the rat on, anyway? I so don't get it. I think the rat is a flip-flopper. Let's call him Mitt!

Pointing and Laughing

I think I finally found my favorite Republican crybaby response to the midterm elections, from the comment forums at Free Republic, naturally. Is it possible to include every single possible issue and cliché in one tantrum? Yes, yes it is:

The RATS stole the election by lying, cheating and covering up their multitude of sins and corruption with the help of the MSM, the commie Soros groups, and their friends the terrorists who escalated their terror attacks for the benefit of the RAT party immediately before the election, so the RATS could once again lie about the progress that's been made by our troops in Iraq. Now our troops are in more danger than before and we'll all have to suffer with the setbacks that are forthcoming including a stop to any hope there was to close the border. Every working citizen is about to feel the hardship that's about to be forced on us by the immediate rollback in the taxcuts the President implemented which will effect the economy and raise the unemployment figures through the roof. Forget about buying a house, a new car or any of the luxuries we've become accustomed too because the interest rates will be out of reach for most very soon.

Unless we find some way to silence the lies of the MSM and reveal to the public the widespread corruption of the RAT party and make them pay as the Republicans have been made to do, there'll be nothing but dark days and misery ahead. We must find a way to stop them in their tracks before they ruin all our lives and the nation, and since they are experts at every dirty trick in the book this will not be an easy task.

Sweet. Oh, but I take it back: this poor, tortured soul forgot to include our plans for hairdresser re-education camps in every elementary school. Tsk.

Desecration: A True Story Ripped from Today's Headlines!

OK, so here's where I do something rare: write about my "real" life.

I live in a basement apartment in an early 20th Century row house. It's not exactly the most air-tight place, so every once in a while a mouse gets in, which I regard as absolutely the most traumatic thing about my homelife (which, I know, makes me pretty damn lucky).

Today when I got home, I caught one of those quick little scurries out of the corner of my eye. Fuck. Then I saw it several times in my living room running around, peeking around corners, mocking my very presence. It was a teeny-tiny one, the smallest I've ever seen and, yes, very cute. Arrrrrgh.

Let's backtrack a few steps, OK? I've got this old American flag which I recently dragged out of the drawer. It's an ugly one, made out of cheap nylon and faded several steps away from the red and blue standards favored by support-our-troops magnet manufacturers and decal-makers. I had it out because I was thinking of using it for some photo backdrops, and today it was, I admit, rather unceremoniously dumped in a pile on the floor. What can I say? I'm a very patriotic person, but the American flag has never really wormed its way into my heart. I've always been a materialist in the traditional sense of the word, so I never bought into the whole "the flag is patriotism made flesh" ideology.

But... ZIP! Across the floor scurried the mouse! And into the little flag-pile on the carpet!

Call it a panic response, but I jumped up and grabbed the nearest thing... a stack of vinyl records, and tossed it mercilously onto the flag-pile-with-mouse. Thinking that if I was in for a penny I might as well be in for a pound, I grabbed another stack of records and threw them on, too.

So now I have this wadded up flag containing a presumably dead mouse covered by a couple of stacks of records in the middle of my living room floor, and thanks to the magic of photoblogging™, you can enjoy the sight, too!

Soooo.... now what the hell do I do?

(Bonus! Yes, I did think of putting more photogenic album covers on the top of the stacks, but then I decided to keep it real. On the left is Slave's incredible 1977 funk masterpiece The Hardness of the World, and on the right is a very strange inspirational/religious album from 1967. To say that a whole entire record of a guy with a hairlip preaching is uneasy listening would be an understatement. Also barely visible are two Meat Puppets LPs, No More Heroes by the Stranglers, and Gyrate by Pylon.)