"I just saw an animal that looked like a small lion."

"It had the mange and everything."

Russian children find a lion cub on the steppe and bring it to school.

"While waiting for police, children petted and played with the cub, named Barsik. One boy even tried to ride it like a horse while it mewled and swiped at the air."

The Pope with a clown, Susan Rice caught between 2 power-heads, and a heavily tattoo'd quarterback.

I don't know what Matt Drudge is trying to slip into our subconscious today, but it's phantasmagoric. Felliniesque.


Click to enlarge.

The quarterback is Colin Kaepernick, who, not having murdered anybody, seems to be doing comparatively well, NFL-wise. His mother is "annoyed." The body scribblings are Bible verses (we're told). Across the chest it says "Against All Odds." Is that in the Bible? I don't know. Ask the Pope (if he's through clowning around). I've heard of the book of Philipians, so maybe there's a Philcollinsians.

Hillary and Rahm are swirling around Susan Rice. The story is Hillary prefers Kerry as her successor. Fine, but I can't see the Pope+Clown → Tattoo'd Quarterback transition. I hate to think there's no connection, that these are simply the stories that belonged at the top of their respective columns. Drudge means so much more. Tell me what the meaning is.

Here's the story about the Pope meeting 1000s of circus performers at the Vatican:

Benedict, a known cat lover, paid particular attention to a pair of lion cubs that were brought up to him, stroking them and chatting with their trainers. At one point Benedict even bent down to caress one — not an easy feat given the 85-year-old pope has trouble with his knees and occasionally uses a cane.

A gentle scene. Not the first thing that leaps to mind when you think about Christians and lions. 

Ray Bradbury has died.

He was 91.

Instapundit says: "People are mostly talking about The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451, but I liked Dandelion Wine."

I think I was assigned "Fahrenheit 451" to read in high school, and I was impressed by it, but for some reason what I most remember of his is "The Veldt." Plot summary:

A family lives in a house with the latest technology. It is called the “Happylife Home” and its installation cost $30,000. The house is filled with machines that do everything for them from cooking meals, to clothing them, to rocking them to sleep. The two children, Peter and Wendy, become fascinated with the "nursery," a virtual reality room that is able to connect with the children telepathically to reproduce any place they imagine.

That was written in 1950, long before video games, etc.

The parents, George and Lydia, soon realize that there is something wrong with their way of life. George and Lydia are also perplexed that the nursery is stuck on an African setting, with lions in the distance, eating the dead carcass of what they assume to be an animal. There they also find recreations of their personal belongings. Wondering why their children are so concerned with this scene of death, they decide to call a psychologist.

The psychologist, David McClean, suggests they turn off the house and leave. The children, completely addicted to the nursery, beg their parents to let them have one last visit. The parents relent, and agree to let them spend a few more minutes there. When they come to the nursery to fetch the children, the children lock them in from the outside. George and Lydia look on as the lions begin to advance towards them. At that point, they realize that what the lions were eating in the distance was not an animal, but their own simulated remains.

The kids realized that the only way they could stay in their nursery is to get rid of their parents by locking George and Lydia in the nursery with the lions.

Don't take our video games away! Parents! Leave those kids alone!

Beetlecam...

... approaches lions.

"Mature, very big, aggressive" lions, bears, and wolves are on the loose in Ohio.

"Schools closed and motorists were warned to stay in their vehicles as officers with assault rifles patrolled a rural area in eastern Ohio Wednesday, a day after police killed dozens of escaped animals from a wild-animal preserve, where the owner was found dead."

Tuesday night, more than 50 law enforcement officials... patrolled the 40-acre (16-hectare) farm and the surrounding areas in cars and trucks, often in rainy downpours. [Muskingum County Sheriff Matt] Lutz said they were concerned about big cats and bears hiding in the dark and in trees.

Here's some video.

Althouse and Meade travel to Wauwatosa to see "The Undefeated."

1. We located the cavernous AMC multiplex within the humongous Mayfair Mall, bought a bag of popcorn bits, and found our way to theater 4 where we chose seats in the crowd of about 50 mostly older people.

2. There was no cheering or laughing during the movie, but in the end there was a big, enthusiastic round of applause.

3. As we left the theater, we encountered a man who asked us if we liked the movie and handed us a glossy card with a picture of Sarah Palin and a list of her political positions: "Drill Now, Strong Defense, Stop Spending." In the sort of way that you say "fine" when a stranger ask how are you, I said "Great!"

4. The filmmakers did not film Sarah Palin, so we see only stock footage of Sarah Palin along with some audio taken from the audio version of her book "Going Rogue." That meant we saw a lot of grainy film that made us wish we could just be home watching it on TV. (Or not watching it.) The old family-movie stills and video were nice, and Meade said they were the best part of the movie.

5. We mostly hear various Palin associates telling us about things, including quite a bit of technical material about how she dealt with the oil and gas business and politics in Alaska. I would have preferred to read about these things, because I couldn't trust that I was getting the story straight. There was never, for example, a professor in his study explaining things in a seemingly neutral way... not that I would have trusted him.

6. Throughout there was a pounding, driving music soundtrack that seemed like it wanted to make sure we were excited, but it was extremely annoying and distracting. There were also metaphorical visuals like black oil pouring into water or bombs dropping or lions chasing zebras. These visuals were undoubtedly intended to add interest and drama, but they seemed pretty amateurish. We glanced at each other and laughed a few times. But the music was no laughing matter. At one point, I leaned over and said, "This music is killing me." If I had been in that movie when I said that, you would have seen a lion leap onto a zebra.

7. The movie tried to make it seem as though the Tea Party grew out of Palin's seeming defeat in the '08 election and the Tea Party was a continuation of the Reagan revolution and Sarah Palin is a continuation of Ronald Reagan. Reagan, Palin, and the Tea Party stand most emphatically apart from establishment Republicans, who are good for just about nothing. A closeup of Mitch McConnell's waxen face makes that rather obvious.

8. There were some pretty good montages of Palin antagonists saying mean things about her. They seemed insane (and misogynistic), in part because we weren't seeing any of her supposed gaffes. It would have been interesting to explore how well the attacks matched up with her missteps, but it was nevertheless entertaining to see all that stuff strung together. Entertaining like a good YouTube video. But this, of course, is a movie in a movie theater...

9. ... which I saw for you, dear readers. I hope this list of 9 items pleases you.

"What did you want? attention? congratulations, i know you. i also know who hitler, ted bundy, and michael vick are."

Maybe serving lion tacos wasn't such a great idea.

Years ago, I took my sons to a restaurant, and one item on the menu was baby loin ribs. My younger son said "Oh, no! That's terrible!" What's so terrible? "Baby lion ribs!"