1929 Blue silk chiffon evening dress with gold stenciling in water bird and floral motif, featuring panels at the back, an attached belt with a gold toned filigree buckle, skirt with accordion pleated, inserted panels to create a handkerchief hemline, lined in blue silk. Designed by Maria Monaci Gallenga. From Augusta Auctions.
Take the National Geographic tour. It’s amazing. Turn the sound on too. And don’t forget to zoom around and look at all the little details on the huge panoramas like seeing people a mile away.
A neighborhood in New Orleans did this. Shut down traffic for a day to throw the thing a block party.
The city said, “haha guys ok, bet you won’t do it again.”
The next year they had an even bigger birthday party for the pot hole. Disrupted even more traffic. Local bakery donated cake.
The city caved and fixed the road.
If you cannot get things fixed by following the rules, be as bombastic as you need to be.
Very effective method of getting the city to fix potholes? Spray paint dicks around them.
Not kidding.
The city often has funds earmarked to remove graffiti, especially graffiti ‘of a salacious nature’, and if you make the pothole into graffiti, they can use those funds to fix it. Move it from a Dept of Transit problem to a Dept. of Public Works problem.
owning these mixes should require a license like owning a gun requires a license, I think
WHY WOULD YOU MAKE A MALINOIS BUT FASTER???????
Controversial Opinion: this is going to actually result in dogs that are MORE sane than the original Malinois.
The thing about Mals is that they are very smart, very capable and really, really, REALLY want you to make all their decisions for them. They’re extraordinarily biddable if you’re confident enough, but if left to their own devices, they get into Descision Paralysis Hell, which is why so many of them are so neurotic- they NEED to have a job or The Horrors ™ get them. Part of the reason they make such good security animals.
Border Collies and Cattle Dogs OTOH, are very independent thinkers who were bred to make complex plans and decisions all on their own. If left to their own devices, they don’t develop panic attacks, they amuse themselves. mostly by doing crime.
Hybridizing a more Independent/Criminal breed into a Malinois is the first step into outcrossing Mals for health/less anxiety.
The Whippet is similar but in the opposite direction: Sighthounds aren’t decisive or ambitious the way that Border Collies and Cattle Dogs are, but they also don’t worry about shit- unless they have something to chase, they’re perfectly content to chill out as a Couch Potato. The drawback of being so chill is that sighthounds are A Little Stupid. Some of them really could get lost in a paper bag.
Miss Firefly up there is definitely very Nyoom, but once she’s NYOOMed to her content, she will probably be happy to vibe in your immediate proximity.
My childhood dog was… weird. A major mongrel. She followed my mom home one day when she was running by the canals, and then we just had her. But the two major breeds I remember her being mixed with were were husky (which was especially cruel for an Arizona dog wandering outside, poor thing) and border collie.
And she did many strange things, but the one I remember most happened one easter. My parents went around the yard, hiding eggs everwhere. And according to them, Leah (the dog) followed them, watching very intensely. Made sure she saw where each egg was put. Some of the eggs were put in spots that a dog really shouldn’t have been able to reach, like in a tree.
Then my parents went to bed, and Leah followed with.
Morning come, us kids went out to go out to find the eggs, and Leah had gathered them all into a pile. Very neatly. There was one egg that had been squoze open, and some jelly beans sampled, but she decided she really wasn’t that keen on them. So the rest were intact. And Leah was very proud of the pile. She sat by it very proudly, as if to say, See? See my works? See my crafts? See what I have done?
See?
And I’ve always been kind of curious about what compelled her to do that. If she was “herding” the eggs, or if she was just bored and thought it was a puzzle or… what.
I guess I’m asking you. You seem to know dog psychology pretty well. I’m curious to hear your guess. Leah was always kind of a black box to me. There were times when she more like something pretending to be a dog than a dog. If that makes sense.
“Mother. I have solved your egg puzzle. I will accept pets as payment but treats are also appreciated. Also, someone threw up in the laundry room.”
She threw up a lot. It was really hard to get her to not gorge herself whenever she ate – I think going hungry on the street really stuck with her. It wasn’t until she was a fairly middle aged dog that she had enough restraint to not eat jellybeans.
She still loved burying food for later though. Her whole life, she did that. And sometimes she’d take her cues for what food was from us, instead of what actually tasted good to her, so we had some weird incidents where we were digging in the garden and found things like cans of soup, or bags of pancake mix, and we’d be like. Leah. You cannot use a can opener. You don’t know how to make pancakes. Why have you done this.
And she would look a little embarrassed but not a whole lot. I remember my dad joking that we couldn’t get too mad at a dog for compulsively hoarding food when we had a whole room in our house just dedicate to dried beans. At some point it’s just funny for God to put a Mormon dog in a Mormon family.
My mother had a dog of a fairly unusual breed, the kind breed whose existence I hadn’t even heard of before the breeder became a family friend. This specific dog was a zero brain cell masterpiece specimen, so while he was fucking stupid, he had an impressive enough pedigree that it would have been a waste to not take him into dog shows, maybe win a few prizes and have him sire pups.
Anyway, this one time we were at a smaller dog show, not really an amateur one but definitely not a huge international event. It was held outdoors on a football field(?), and not only was my mom’s dog the only one of his breed in the show, they had somehow completely forgot to include him in the show’s schedule. We had come all the way over here to show off a dog that didn’t have a time, judges, or ring for him anywhere in the plans.
So while my mother isn’t the type to Demand To Speak To The Manager when something doesn’t go her way, everyone was in the agreement that the fuck-up was on the show runners’ side, and they were very apologetic about such an unprofessional mistake. And they did manage to find a show ring with a slot to squeeze him in, just before the next breed was about to start.
So they made a quick announcement in the ring just before the scheduled breed was going to start, and into the ring went the breeder and mom’s dog. And while they were doing their little lap, surrounded by a mostly quiet, uninterested audience, I heard some random kid’s faint voice asking
What happened to that one?
And it suddenly hit me how funny this whole situation must look like with no context. Mom’s dog or his whole breed were not on the printed out leaflet schedule of the show, in this specific ring or otherwise. If someone showed up now, or somehow otherwise missed the announcement (which wasn’t even broadcasted in any way, just yelled out over the crowd by one guy), holy shit they would be confused.
The dog breed that was booked on that spot was samoyeds. My mother’s dog was a peruvian inca orchid. Imagine being at a dog show in the right place at the right time, 100% expecting to see one of those fluffy clouds on the left, and out walks the motherfucker on the right.
amhrancas 