monday morn

I was going to ask what kind of bears your friend was tracking, but then I realized that I don't know one bear from another.  There are black and brown ones, and some other kinds I guess, and of course the grizzly.  I guess what I wanted to know was was it the human eating kind.  I got to wondering why it is called the grizzly.  Anymore grizzly has come to mean. well tough enough, but I don't know whether the name of the bear of the other predates, and wiki was not helpful on that account.  Have you ever seen the Werner Herzog doc, Grizzly Man, about that crazy guy who thought he could become friends with the grizzlies just by hanging around them and ended up getting eaten by them? Pretty good flick.

I've seen that book about the empire and leafed through it at Barnes and Noble.  The odd thing is that we never tried to hold onto territory very long.  We did fight an ugly colonial war with the Philippines that is largely forgotten now. 

The opening went well enough, good enough turnout and somebody bought one right on the spot which I don't think has happened before.  The muffins didn't do that well.  They were kind of burnt which I kind of like but obviously others don't.  I didn't put enough jalapenos in one of the batches, and they turned out not so hot.  Nothing more disappointing than biting into something that you expect to be hot, and then it isn't very. 

I watched that video about the Japanese painter and I wasn't that impressed.  It reminded me of those tv painters, where they would show you how to paint a tree or a bird or a sunset or whatever, and the thing is if you have a rote manner that you always follow when doing those things well what is the point?  If I would never paint something like a tree the same way everytime.  It depends on what is going on with the rest of the painting and then you try to paint the tree corresponding to how you have painted everything else.  To me the whole point of a painting is finding out how it turns out, if you know that before you begin then again, why bother?  I do a thing where after every sitting on a painting I take a photograph and then I put them together into an animated gif, and you can see the results here: http://www.bckat.us/KenSchadt/112015/index.htm

It was good to see Old Dog at my opening.  He's not too interested in me and Beagles going after each other hammer and tongs, and I agree, I will try to do something more like telling a story in the future.  I was going to write about cars and my changing feelings towards them today, but it is getting late and I think I have written enough for today.