When a chicken brings you arugula, it is considered an act of love.
I certify no animals were harmed during the making of this comic.
The scarecrow is a trained professional.
My class project is due and finals are on Wednesday.
My salad days, when I was green in judgment…
Quotation from Wm. Shakespeare, Anthony And Cleopatra
Boys, I may not know much, but I know chicken shit from chicken salad.
Quotation from Lyndon B. Johnson, former American President
Out of curiosity, I googled how many days old I am. Then I tried to remember as many of those days as I could. I found eureka moments, childhood memories, people, places, my wedding day, adventures, some Christmases. I remembered important days as well as insignificant days that were somehow important enough to be retained. I regretably confess I cannot remember all 14,368 days.
No, today isn’t my birthday, but I will nonetheless try to make it memorable.
Here is a “How Many Days Young Am I?” calculator. (Derbyshire Guide)
Here is the test to find whether your mission on earth is finished. If you’re alive, it isn’t.
Quotation from Richard Bach
“What happened to the chocolate?”
“I ate it. It was there for three days. You had as many opportunities to eat it as I did.”
Symptoms of chocolate toxicity include: hyper-excitability and hyper-irritability; increased heart rate, restlessness and urination; muscle tension and tremors. Complications include hypothermia, seizures, cardiac arrest, even death. Death can result from intoxication… No antidote exists for chocolate poisoning in a dog.
Quotation from VetInfo.com, My Dog Ate Chocolate: How Much is Toxic?
There’s no road map on how to raise a family; it’s always an enormous negotiation.
Quotation from Meryl Streep
I’m not a mother but I still like to nurture and make pancakes.
I remember when I was a kid I used to come home from Sunday School and my mother would get drunk and try and make us pancakes.
George Carlin
The house and the tree in the header photo remind me of an old married couple. When one finally goes, the other will die shortly after.
They were watching Animal Planet, one of their favorite shows, when a nurse’s aide checked on them.
“I’m going to die today,” Lolie told the aide, who asked her if she needed to go back to the hospital.
No, she just felt “different,” Lolie told her.
When the aide came back a short time later, Lolie wasn’t breathing. Moments later, they discovered James had also passed away.
Quotation from Wendy Victora, NWF Daily News “Couple together for 59 years; Die moments apart”
Petting a dog, a camel or an elephant can reduce feelings of loneliness and stress. Assuming of course, you don’t get spat upon, peed on, bitten or squashed.
It’s not that animals have magic vibes coming out of them. It’s about giving people a sense of life beyond what they ordinarily experience.
Quotation from William Banks, Saint Louis University
Elephant Therapy and Equine Therapy Programs are used as tools for gaining self-understanding and emotional growth in adults and children, and are especially effective for children with Asperger’s and Autism.
Friends will arrive and friends will disappear. There are lifetime friendships, to be sure, but like great-grandmother’s diamond ring, nothing lasts forever.
I been meek, and hard like an oak.
I seen pretty people disappear like smoke.
Friends will arrive and friends will disappear,
If you want me, honey baby, I’ll be here.
Lyric from Vic Chesnutt, Buckets of Rain
[Vic Chesnutt, in a wheelchair since an auto accident at age 18, died on Christmas day from an overdose of muscle relaxants]
A wish for world peace from me to you. Merry Christmas.
Christmas is perhaps the only time in the year when people can obey their natural impulses and express their true sentiments without feeling self-conscious.
Quotation from Francis C. Farley
Christmas is not as much about opening our presents as opening our hearts.
Quotation from Janice Maeditere
How do children learn how to make elephant sounds? I can understand a moo-moo here and an oink-oink there, but an elephant? It must be something babies are born with, because every infant I’ve met knows how to **BiaAAH!**
A baby’s cry is appropriately disturbing: ear-piercing enough to get the caregiver’s attention… but not so disturbing as to make the listener want to avoid the sound altogether.
Quotation from Ask Dr. Sears, 7 Things Parents Should Know About Baby’s Cries
I think we all hunger for love even when we have it, for without it, we are a shell of what we could be.
I compare myself with my former self, not with others. Not only that, I tend to compare my current self with the best I have been… When I am my present “normal” self, I am far removed from when I have been my liveliest, most productive, most intense, most outgoing and effervescent. In short, for myself, I am a hard act to follow.
Quotation from Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
Regarding The Love of Your Life: Do you wait forever for perfection or settle for ‘good enough?’
Why thus longing, thus forever sighing
For the far-off, unattained, and dim,
While the beautiful all round thee lying
Offers up its low, perpetual hymn?
Poem from Harriet Winslow Sewall
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness.
Poem from John Keats
What is it about romantic movies that feels so good?
Holden: I love you.
Alyssa: You love me?
Holden: I love you. And not, not in a friendly way.
Quotation from the movie Chasing Amy
Grace is loving those who don’t deserve to be loved. It’s giving an undeserved gift.
Grace in women gains the affections sooner, and secures them longer, than any thing else. It is an outward and visible sign of an inward harmony of soul.
Quotation from William Hazlitt
Grace is available for each of us every day- our spiritual daily bread- but we’ve got to remember to ask for it with a grateful heart and not worry about whether there will be enough for tomorrow.
Quotation from Sarah Ban Breathnach
This is comic #700. I am grateful for every comment, every kind word, given over the last 2 1/2 years. Thank you so much for overlooking my faults and petty mistakes. I am blessed because of you.
Consider donating blood to your local blood bank. It’s life giving. Afterwards, they give you cookies.
She loves blood-red poppies for a garden to walk in.
In a loose white gown she walks
and a new child tugs at cords in her body.
Her head to the west at evening when the dew is creeping,
A shudder of gladness runs in her bones and torsal fiber:
She loves blood-red poppies for a garden to walk in.
Poem by Carl Sandburg, Poppies
Some people are ambitious. They take big steps. Others are content with whatever life offers them. They take smaller steps. Either way, being valuable and productive still means being able to move your feet. The first step, that giant one that gives you direction, is always the hardest one to make.
Ambition is an expensive impulse, one that requires an enormous investment of emotional capital. Like any investment, it can pay off in countless different kinds of coin. The trick, as any good speculator will tell you, is recognizing the riches when they come your way.
Quotation from Ambition: Why Some People Are Most Likely To Succeed (Time Magazine)
P.S. No matter what it is you do, if you do it well enough, you can make money at it.
Final note: The wine industry is very, very big in California.
When you are with your best friend, the value of time is doubled.
Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.
Quotation from Eleanor Roosevelt
When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed,
And shout from where I am, What is it?
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.
Poem by Robert Frost, A Time to Talk
Is it strange that some people seek to have relationships with high-profile criminals, including murderers and rapists? Scott Peterson, convicted of murdering his wife Laci and their unborn son Conner, has received at least three marriage proposals while on death row at San Quentin prison. Both Erik and Lyle Menendez, brothers convicted of murdering their parents, got married while in prison. Maybe marrying somebody famous (or dangerous) makes you feel special…
Squeaky Fromme Soon Out of Prison (SFGate.com) Fromme stood vigil at the Charles Manson trial and, like other supporters, carved an “X” on her forehead as a sign of solidarity. Manson, who had recruited her off the streets in Southern California, called her “Squeaky” because of her voice.
“So you want to give her your chain?” the Slaver asked.
“No,” the customer replied. “I don’t want to buy the slave to keep her in chains. I want her for a companion.”
She called to me as I passed her by.
Lady of the night looked in my eyes.
She said, I been through some changes
But one thing always stays the same:
Without love, theres nothing without love.
Lyrics by Bon Jovi, Without Love
“Love Conquers All” is written above the door. Omnia Vincit Amor. The phrase is taken from Virgil’s Eclogues. This comes from the belief that without Love, everything is meaningless. But is it possible to love pain? Would loving pain conquer it?
People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain.
Quotation from Jim Morrison
Embrace of Pain (Starwars Wiki) “The device could induce so much pain that it was capable of turning even the most noble Jedi to the dark side of the Force.”
P.S. Happy Independence Day, America!
Why do politicians make the worst decisions?
South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford: Mistress is ‘soul mate,’ but I want to fall back in love with wife (New York Daily News)
I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificent gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curve of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of the night’s light – but hey, that would be going into sexual details…
Quotation from Governor Mark Sanford, written in an email to his “soulmate” Maria Belen Chapur
He was writing something and wanted some space to get away from the kids.
Quotation from Jenny Sanford, on her husband’s mysterious “disappearance”
How is it that one can have lots of friends, and still be lonely? I miss Northie, who is hardly online anymore. I miss Chase, who “disappeared” when she had her baby. And I miss my father, who died in 1994.
My Father had a profound influence on me. He was a lunatic.
Quotation from Spike Milligan
You don’t have to deserve your mother’s love. You have to deserve your father’s.
Quotation from Robert Frost
Caution: Love may be hazardous to your health. It can cause headaches, dizzinesss, weakness, nausea, vertigo and stomach aches. Love is highly addictive; Studies have shown that Love can be harder to quit than heroin or cocaine. Your children are twice as likely to Love if you do.
Cigarettes sold in Canada must display warnings which take up 50% of the principal display space. (Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada)
Great passions, my dear, don’t exist: they’re liars fantasies. What do exist are little loves that may last for a short or a longer while.
Quotation from Anna Magnani
I love animal crackers. My favorite is koala, although hippopotamus and elephant are delicious too.
When I get hold of the big bad wolf
I just push him under to drown
Then I bite him in a million bits
And I gobble him right down
Animal crackers in my soup
Do funny things to me
They make me think my neighbourhood
Is a big menagerie
Lyrics from Shirley Temple, Animal Crackers In My Soup
