10 for 10 (10th Entry)................Defining Earworm with Michael Bolton

Greetings to our blog readers in Ukraine, Turkey, and Ghana.......

Today, we bring you the 10th and final installment of our 10 for 10 series commemorating the tenth anniversary of this very blog, which went up (in its original form) on Sept. 21, 2005. It was a radically different time then as Ari the beloved family tuxedo cat was still alive. Alas, he died just shy of his 20th birthday on March 2nd, 2007. Ok, otherwise, I guess things haven't really changed that much!

We are using an image of Michael Bolton because when we hear the slang word 'earworm,' the junkbox in our minds starts playing "How Am I Supposed to Live Without You?"..........which makes us wonder if Dick Cheney urged that this song be played to terrorist or terrorist suspects while waterboarding them at Gitmo, the American naval base in Cuba.

I suppose we will never know the answer to that, but we have three definitions of urban slang words/terms for you:

1) Earworm: A song that sticks in your mind relentlessly, and will not leave no matter how hard you try (applies to Michael Bolton as well as any song by Air Supply).

2) Gold digger: A person who goes out with you for for your money, or someone who dates Tori Spelling!

3) Gender ninja: A person has an uncertain gender based on their personal appearance, hmm....see also the character Pat that was once part of "Saturday Night Live".....

http://www.urbandictionary.com

10 for 10 (4th Entry): Love Those Van Cats

Greetings to our blog readers in Cuba, Colombia, and Egypt.....

Today, we feature an image of a Turkish Van cat, which retail for circa $50 on the streets of Istanbul. Here in the United States, we gather they cost considerably more.

If you are looking for a cat in an animal shelter, you will probably not find a Van cat, but tuxedo cats, orange tabby cats, and calico cats need homes, here are two animal shelter links we are listing:

http://www.spartanburghumane.org/ (Humane Society of Spartanburg, South Carolina)

http://hswcmd.org/ (Humane Society of Hagerstown, Maryland)

Top 10 from Sunday Roanoke Times: Speed Bump Wins for a Fourth Week in a Row

Greetings to our blog readers in Austria, Egypt, and South Korea........

Today, we look at yesterday's comic strips in the "Roanoke Times," a daily newspaper serving Roanoke, Va., and the southwest Virginia region. This week, "For Better or For Worse," a strip that rarely cracks our top ten comes in seventh with a strip about dog food. But, "Get Fuzzy" which features a strip about cat food ranks five places higher. However, "Speed Bump" with a great take on a woman blaming her husband for passing gas as his dog is eating all beans and drinking beer.

"Pearls Before Swine" has another Stephan Pastis pun which features Mountain Dew; it does appear to be an overt product endorsement and neither is our use of their logo!

Here is the top 10:

1) Speed Bump

2) Get Fuzzy

3) Pearls Before Swine

4) Zits

5) Doonesbury

6) Jump Start

7) For Better or For Worse

 8) Garfield

9) Dilbert

10) Non Sequitur

http://www.roanoke.com

http://www.gocomics.com

Top Ten Sunday Comic Strips from May 24th Roanoke Times: A Trip Down the Yellow Brick Road....

Greetings to our blog readers in Japan, Brazil and Poland.....

This week, we select "Speed Bump" with an homage to "The Wizard of Oz" as our top pick. Second place goes to "Get Fuzzy," where Satchel the Dog and Bucky the Cat have a row. There is a mention of a cat in a Youtube video; hence we are using an image of a Van cat. Finally, "Pearls Before Swine" has a humorous take on a husband and wife having it out via messages in a bottle. This made us think of the famous song "Message in a Bottle" by The Police, a band with Sting which featured Stewart Copeland (pict. bottom) as its drummer.

Here is our top ten:

1) Speed Bump

2) Get Fuzzy

3) Pearls Before Swine

4) Dilbert

5) Doonesbury

6) Garfield

7) Zits

8) Jump Start

9) For Better or For Worse

10) Family Circus

http://www.roanoke.com/comics

Comic Strips Survey Sunday Roanoke Times (Jan.11th): Stephan Pastis Wins Again

Greetings to our blog readers in Belgium, the great country which has brought us Asterix and Lucky Luke (just kidding, we know those are French comic book characters and that, of course, Belgium is the home of Tintin).......

Today, we once again give you our ten favorite Sunday comic strips, this time from the Sunday "Roanoke Times;" Stephan Pastis once again delivered the goods in "Pearls Before Swine," with a hilarious take on how Zebra, one of the title character, got his dad the epic Ken Burns PBS documentary on the Civil War, and his dad was unable to figure out how to use a dvd player. We are using an image of Stonewall Jackson (on top), a Civil War general for the Confederates, for that strip.

Yeti the Snowman which one might see in Nepal (well, maybe not) is our center image. In Dave Coverly's single panel strip "Speed Bump" a woman is sitting beside Yeti in a doctor's office waiting room; we imagine Yeti was perhaps reading "National Geographic" or "Afar"....well, maybe not!

And, lastly, we go with a Simaese cat in the bottom image for "Get Fuzzy," which once again proves that cats and dogs are basically the ones controlling our lives.

Here is the top ten:

1) Pearls Before Swine #

2) Speed Bump #

3) Get Fuzzy #

4) Garfield #

5) Doonesbury #

6) Agnes #

7) Dilbert #

8) Non Sequitur #

9) Zits *

10) Jump Start #

#-Go Comics strip

*-Comics Kingdom strip

http://www.gocomics.com

http://www.comicskingdom.com

 http://www.roanokedoesntsuck.com

http://www.nationageographic.com

Next Ten Films We Hope to Stream from Netflix: Finding the 179 Minutes for Blue is the Warmest Color

It may be a while before we can get to all ten of these films, especially the French film "Blue is the Warmest Color," which was a sensation at the last Cannes Film Festival and is apparently one of the films which is being most streamed this week on Netflix. One problem is that the film does run for two hours and 59 minutes! It depicts a lesbian relationship between two teenagers and the film received an NC-17 rating here in the United States.

Other films on the list include the documentaries about death row ("Into the Abyss") and the revolution in Egypt ("The Square," which was nominated for an Oscar; the film was also started by a Kickstarter campaign).

Here is the list:

1) Blue is the Warmest Color (France. 2013. dir. Abdellatif Kechiche; top image)

2) Barbara (Germany. 2012, dir. Christian Petzold).

3) Upstream Color (2013. dir. Shane Caruth)

4) Pretty in Pink (1986. dir. Howard Deutch, love the soundtrack!)

5) Malena (Italy. 2000. dir. Giuseppe Tornatore)

6) Into the Abyss (doc. 2011. dir. Werner Herzog, middle image)

7) The Square (doc. 2013. dir. Jehane Noujaim)

8) Punch-Drunk Love (2002. dir. Paul Thomas Anderson; one of the best film roles of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman)

9) Alps (Greece. 2011. dir. Giorgos Lanthimos)

10) No One Knows About Persian Cats (Iran. 2009. dir. Bahman Ghobadi, bottom image)

http://www.netflix.com

https://www.kickstarter.com/

http://www.vadp.org/ (Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, based in Charlottesville)

http://tcadp.org/ (Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty)

http://apscaswell.org/ (Caswell County Animal Shelter in Yanceyville, NC, due south of Danville, Va)

http://baltimoreanimalshelter.org/ (Baltimore Animal Shelter)

http://www.wernerherzog.com/

Top Ten Comic Strips from the Sunday Roanoke Times: Can Anyone Top Stephan Pastis?

Greetings to our blog readers in Cyprus, Peru and New Zealand.

Welcome to another edition of "Politics, Culture and Other Wastes of Time," which dates back to Sept. 21, 2005! But, our friend and fellow blogger Chris Knight has been around longer than us as he just celebrated the tenth anniversary of his blog "The Knight Shift."

Special greetings to those of you checking us out from The o2 Lounge in Breckenridge, Colo., and Crooks Corner Restaurant in Chapel Hill, NC, which are a mere 26 hours and 45 minutes away from each other! Hope all is well in Colorado and North Carolina.

Today, we look at our favorite comic strips from "The Roanoke Times" in Roanoke, Va. The competition is a little less steep than "The Washington Post," which features "Sherman's Lagoon," "Rhymes with Orange" and "Brewster Rockit: SpaceGuy," but "The Roanoke Times" does have "Hi and Lois," which "The Washington Post" does not.

Our sweepstakes winner for today is once again "Pearls Before Swine," which proves that we are over his character Ataturk the Spitting Llama (Tilly Gokbudak, the editor of this blog, who is me, is a Turkish-American. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk is the patron saint of modern Turkey, well in the secular sense).

Today, Stephan introduced a complicated concept for a 'Brain Alert' system for older people who can't remember that Jimmy Carter was president before Ronald Reagan. The last panel ends more perfectly than a season finale of "Homeland." We'll leave it there, so we don't have to issue a 'spoiler alert' (I'm still shocked at the season finale of "Homeland.")

The runner-up strip was the increasingly surprising "Garfield," which seems to have gotten exceptionally more funny since it has been parodied by "Garfield Minus Garfield." Garfield has actually around since 1978, which means at 36, he is older than the world's oldest cat, who reportedly lives in York, South Carolina, a border town with just under 10,000 people (ok, we are making that up).

"Get Fuzzy" was a bit shockingly literate today as it seemed to evoke George Orwell's "Animal Farm" or perhaps we are reading too much into it!

Here is today's top ten:

1) Pearls Before Swine

2) Garfield

3) Get Fuzzy

4) Doonesbury

5) Zits

6) Speed Bump

7) "Non Sequitur"

8) Agnes

9) Dilbert

10) Funky Winkerbean

http://www.theo2lounge.com


http://www.crookscorner.com

http://www.stephanpastis.wordpress.com

http://www.garfield.com

http://www.gocomics.com/getfuzzy

No Blog Entry Today as I'm Sick as a Cat

Since I am under the weather today, we will feature this image of a Siamese cat roaming the streets of Sofia or Varna or some other Bulgarian city. We got this image from googling 'Cats in Bulgaria.'

We also want to mention that the great '80s independent rock band Big Head Todd and the Monster, which we believe are from Athens, Ga., will perform at the fabled 9:30 Club in Washington, DC, on Sat. Jan. 18th; the concert costs $27.50, which costs as much as a parking lot ticket in the nation's capital. Somehow, we can't imagine that Congs. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) and Bob Goodlatte (R-Va) will be there???!!!

Speaking of Goodlatte, though we are opposed to him politically, he is from my hometown of Roanoke, Va., as is cult film director Charles Cullen, who turns 50 today. His film "The Day the Whole $%#&*@ World Blew Up" is clearly influenced by the films of Akira Kurosawa and Ingmar Bergman (yes, we are kidding!).......but, Charles Cullen of Roanoke, Va., should not be confused with the other Charles Cullen.

The other Cullen, who is just three years older than our Charles Cullen, is the most notorious serial killer in New Jersey history!

http://www.930.com

http://www.bigheadtodd.com

http://www.catchannel.com

http://www.cullenstudio.net

Out Top 10 Favorite Comic Strips from the Roanoke Times (Oct. 27th edition)

This entry was supposed to be posted way back on Oct. 30th, but we got distracted, and yeah life happens. But, we are back now. And, we will resume where we left off, as we look at our ten favorite comic strips from the Oct.27th Sunday edition of "The Roanoke Times" in Roanoke, Va.


Here we go:

1. Doonesbury (Image One_ a Virginia Tech Hokies helmet. The strip dealt with college football and academics).

2. Pearls Before Swine (Image Two_ this is of a pygmy goat from Cameroon residing at the Mill Mountain Zoo in Roanoke_ a goat is one of the main characters in "Pearls Before Swine")

3. "Garfield" (Image Three)

4. Funky Winkerbean

5. Agnes

6. Dilbert

7. Zits

8. Blondie

9. Hi and Lois

10. Get Fuzzy

http://www.exemplum.com/mmzoo/SitePages/index.aspx

http://www.doonesbury.slate.com

http://www.garfield.com

http://www.funkywinkerbean.com

http://www.dilbert.com

Image to Fill Space: Van Cat

The adorable Van Cat is named so because the breed stems from the Van, a province and city is far southeastern Turkey, near the border with Iran.

Guest Blogger of the Day: Zappa the Family Cat

Greetings to our blog readers in Switzerland, Russia and New Zealand, today, we feature commentary from our guest blogger Zappa the Family Cat; these comments do contain profanity so we had to delete a few letters. And, yes, Zappa is named for Frank Zappa:

"I want some **d ***n ****ing roast beef, man, what do mean it's too late? You are such a ******d and an ******e, ya now that?"

By the way, the cows pictured are the American state of Kansas, located in the Midwest.

Top Ten Things To Do List

Let's get started right away:

1. Don't fight with Armenians

2. Don't fight with (other) Turks

3. Get mom flowers for Mother's Day

4. Make Mother's Day restaurant reservation

5. Don't argue with Republicans

6. Change cat liter

7. take photos (when it stops raining)

8. Go to a minor league baseball game

9. Work-out: Body Flow

10. refill Xanax (not actually a drug that we are taking)