Robin has sent me this picture of Muntz: a beautiful cat and a perfect photograph.
If you want to see just how much he’s grown, compare it to one of the earliest pictures of Muntz, taken just after Jim rescued him, last spring:
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A Bad Guide 
A fine cat indeed! He has clearly grown both in stature and in wisdom, and yet is still someone you don’t want to mess with.
Handsome!
P.S. I have just come across this
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthpicturegalleries/7528285/Animal-pictures-of-the-week-26-March-2010.html
An impressive moustache. Flashy, without being embarrassing.
Awww.
He’s greyed. But still adorable.
What is that fold of skin occluding part of his right eye ? I don’t see it in the lower picture.Is it just a reflexive squint against the light source used for the picture ?
“Partially obstructing”, not “occluding”.
That first photo – it’s like an interior by one of the great Dutch masters. Is the secret in the light?
Yes, I agree. If you mean Vermeer, for example, I’d say it’s the cold side-lighting, the monochrome and the domestic subject matter (mostly, as you say, the first).
Stu, cats do have a third (internal) eyelid, but it looks to me like it’s the lighting, like they are saying, the way the Dutch masters painted, say grapes.
nictitating membrane
From empty’s link:
I need to think twice in future before I eyeball something. By analogy, we might here have an explanation why, in a Mexican standoff, the first one to blink loses. It means he’s worrying about his balls, and is too chicken to attack. Chickens have nictitating membranes.
It’s not really necessary. I close my eyes with just two lids when I bang my head against the wall; they never fall out.
when I bang my head against the wall
Yes, I’ve been doing that recently due to certain people in my current project. Time to find a better tree, I guess.
Anyone who still has a wall to bang their head against is lucky, our workplace has gone through drastic cuts. I wouldn’t have made it the last couple of months if they hadn’t found some hours for me substituting in math classes. Math! Who’da thunk? But I have become a neighborhood legend in the math business since a good friend of my landlady was in the class and I happened to teach her proportions, which she had never understood before. I also spent a lot of time breaking cookies in half to demonstrate fractions. It’s always easier to learn something when there’s food involved. Ø would be so proud of me!
Nij, that works with cookies, but possibly not with tortillas. My first thought was that you could wow the señoras by showing them how to calculate the number of tortillas they need to make when all the relatives come for dinner. But one can never make too many tortillas. Whatever is left over is recycled into the soup. Maybe this would be a good object-lesson to explain the inequality relation.
Decades ago, I read that the expression “who’d a thunk it” originated in Mary McCarthy’s novel The Group, which I had just finished at the time. I think it’s unlikely that the expression started there. I remember the novel as good fun.
I also remember reading about a wonderful remark McCarthy once made:
Wasn’t it the Polly character who always said “who’d a thunk it” ? If that’s right, how can I remember such a thing for so many years ??
Was Lillian Hellman’s family in mayonnaise? If so, I’d like to write something about the fame that accompanies those who prepare salad dressings–Paul Newman, the Heinz family, many more in Europe, probably. Which came first, the fame or the dressing? It’s not always clear.
There’s Macarthyism, no Hellmanism, but there is Pelmanism.
You could look into the background of Thomy Ungerer. Or get the dope on the Nazi mayonnaise that inspired Kraft durch Freude
Have there been famous window dressings ?
Although that looks to me to be Freude durch Kraft.
Language mentioned Windex recently, that’s a sort of window dressing. And I believe Andy Warhol started his career in window dressing.
I’ve found a different explanation for the origin of “Who’d a thunk it”, also connected to a McCarthy:
“…”Who’d a thunk it?” is not only a phrase from the mouth of a real dummy, but we actually know which dummy. In the ’30s and ’40s one of the most popular radio shows in the U.S. was “Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy,” jokes and sneering by Charlie, voice by Edgar (father of Candice). Besides the cosmopolitan Charlie, Edgar had another dummy, Mortimer Snerd, a country rube dressed like the hayseed he was. He was a very dumb dummy, and was always amazed and awed by the marvels of the modern world, none of which he could understand. So “Who’d a thunk it?” are Snerd’s words.” http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/24/messages/1187.html
I thought I’d left this comment yesterday, but my computer must have eaten it:
I’ve found a different explanation for the origin of “Who’d a thunk it”, also involving a McCarthy:
“…”Who’d a thunk it?” is not only a phrase from the mouth of a real dummy, but we actually know which dummy. In the ’30s and ’40s one of the most popular radio shows in the U.S. was “Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy,” jokes and sneering by Charlie, voice by Edgar (father of Candice). Besides the cosmopolitan Charlie, Edgar had another dummy, Mortimer Snerd, a country rube dressed like the hayseed he was. He was a very dumb dummy, and was always amazed and awed by the marvels of the modern world, none of which he could understand. So “Who’d a thunk it?” are Snerd’s words. ” http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/24/messages/1187.html
beautiful muntz! I wondered how he was doing. what a handsome fellow!
I tried to post this comment before, I hope it’ll work this time:
I found a different explanation for the origin of “Who’d a thunk it”, also connected to a McCarthy:
“…Who’d a thunk it?” is not only a phrase from the mouth of a real dummy, but we actually know which dummy. In the ’30s and ’40s one of the most popular radio shows in the U.S. was “Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy,” jokes and sneering by Charlie, voice by Edgar (father of Candice). Besides the cosmopolitan Charlie, Edgar had another dummy, Mortimer Snerd, a country rube dressed like the hayseed he was. He was a very dumb dummy, and was always amazed and awed by the marvels of the modern world, none of which he could understand. So “Who’d a thunk it?” are Snerd’s words.”
Forgot the url: http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/24/messages/1187.html
Tried to add the url of the quotation, but it won’t post, don’t know why. That’s obviously why my comment got lost before. Anyway, if you google who’d a thunk it origin, it’s the second result.
But of course, Mortimer Snerd ! How could I have forgotten !
Sometimes the blogging authorities randomly pick on someone’s post and claim it’s “spam”. I’ve retrieved it. I don’t normally look, though, so people have to tell me it if happens to them.
Hey, authorities, here’s some spam!
http://www.spam.com/
Help, I’m not being oppressed!
I used to love spam fritters when I was at school. I haven’t had one for years.