This week I was forced to swerve my car because the driver in front of me had was braking to avoid two deer. No, this was not on the highway as you might expect, but in a Food Lion parking lot. It can't be a coincidence that deer would be invading our shopping centers as we gear up for the merchandising bonanza that is Halloween. That's right: deer are out for your candy. And they'll take it any way they can get it.

This insidious menace is only the latest escalation in the Great Deer Uprising of 2010. Unable to enter the city of Newnan legally, the deer are now resorting to a crafty ruse in order to sneak into town under cover of darkness and steal the candy that our children earned the hard way: by going door to door and extorting it under threat of violence!

If we let the deer get away with this, we'll only be letting the terrorists win! (Terrorist deer, that is. Make no mistake, terrorist children should still encouraged: it's the American way!) So this year, check under that mask when a cute ne'er-do-well comes banging on your door. There's a chance you'll find that he just may not be human. Far worse than zombies or vampires, he could be a deer in disguise!

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Today is my birthday. (Yes, thank you.)

I asked my mother for a picture of one of the Batman cakes that I had when I was a wee lad so that I could run a Batman-related birthday item today. After a few minutes of rummaging through a dozen photo albums apparently full of dog pictures, she shrugged and said, "I guess I didn't keep any of your baby pictures. And I don't love you." (I may be paraphrasing.)

Faced with the prospect of being unable to prove that I once had a Batman cake and therefore potentially being the object of ridicule when I suggest otherwise, I decided to recreate my childhood. I'm pretty sure this is an exact recreation:

I for one think I've aged pretty well.

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While I'm on the subject of catalogs, do you notice anything odd about the cover to this catalog I received in the mail last week?

No? Maybe it's kind of hard at that resolution. Here, let me help; I've got an eye for this sort of thing. How about this?

Gee, whiz! What happened to that poor dog's toes? Look, I know that Uga VII is dead, so you can't get any new photographs of him. But there isn't exactly a shortage of images of him sitting on grass. Especially since this image is a photoshopped from a picture of... Uga VII sitting on grass.

These images are all the intellectual property of long-time Athens photographer Danny White. According to UGA, Mr. White has been the "official Uga portrait photographer since 1973." And so far as I can tell, he's taken some pretty darn good pictures of some damn good dogs. On first glance, you might think that this is one of them. Seems like someone disagrees with you, though.

Granted, there are a few unsightly wrinkles in Uga's custom Nike jersey. And his right eye is looking a little lazy. And he's got some grass hanging out of his mouth. But none of that explains why someone 'shopped in some li'l doggy toes!

Don't just take my word for it, see for yourself here against the original:

Mouse over/off this swf to control your own seizure.

If you really like this image -- the photoshopped one, not the original -- you can pick up your own copy as a handy refrigerator magnet available at www.ugaredzone.com. (For reasons unexplained, the magnet image is slightly different than either of the other two!) However, be warned: you'd better be prepared to explain to your observant guests why you have a picture of a dog with fake feet.

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I don't comment on politics often, mainly because I figure it's a mug's game: anyone running for President probably isn't worth electing President. However, yesterday the Hon. Hillary Clinton defended her refusal to withdraw from the all-but-over race for the Democratic Party nomination by explaining that she was still in the running just in case something should happen to her opponent:

"We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California."

Now, just for a second, let's assume that she wasn't hinting that her opponent, the Hon. Barrack Obama, will be assassinated on the way to the nomination. What is the chance that if Obama is removed from the race she wouldn't be the party nominee even if she willingly stepped aside? Hmm? (Historical note: RFK was in second place in his party's delegate counts when he was slain, and it is unlikely that he would have received the party nomination should he have survived.)

While it is too much to hope that the Clintons will be learning a lesson from this (depending on what your definition of the word "is" is), it's not too late for you, the reader of this blog, to take away a little something. As Aesop might say, the stubborn donkey that stays late in the field is likely to contract hoof-in-mouth disease.

(On a tangentially related aside, what's the chance that Ted Kennedy's recently revealed malignant brain tumor is the result of a conspiracy? I'd hate to see Teddy left out of the family legacy, after all. Poor guy might actually die from >shudder< natural causes.)

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I received my Congressionally-approved $300 of Economic Stimulus yesterday alongside my income tax refund.

I've given a lot of thought about how to spend it. I decided to donate the sum to a presidential candidate's campaign fund.

No, I'm kidding. That'd be throwing my money away. I'm spending it on lottery tickets.

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Say, you remember that co-worker that I mentioned the other day, the one who received the award? He's been on my back about posting him holding a sign identifying him as a schmuck, by the way. What a schmuck.

Well, yesterday he was named Employee of the Month at his company for the umpteenth consecutive month. I had to spend the day listening to other people who work in the office building congratulate him on his "accomplishment." Listen, people, he's Employee of the Month because he's the only one working there. (I'm merely temp help.)

You can't tell him that, though. All this praise is going straight to his big head. Why, at lunch today, I swear he told me that he deserves a raise. Can you believe that? Now he's too good for $6 an hour! What nerve!

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I had a crappy day. I woke up very early (for me), paid to gas up my car ($50!), and drove to work where I spent the better part of 8 hours arguing with an Apple Mac that had none of the software to complete any of the tasks that I was given. (I once thought that Macs sucked. They are worse than that, they're evil. What designer decided "let's see what we can make those monkeys do with just one button!"?) When the software was right, the hardware was wrong. In those rare cases where the software and hardware were in alignment, some other piece of critical information was missing. All around fun, I tell you.

Meanwhile, my co-worker was busy appearing in the local business center newsletter and receiving praise for the "great job" he's doing. Schmuck. I've known this guy for almost 20 years, and I can count the number of pictures I've seen of him on one hand. I was beginning to think that he was a vampire. But you give him one Certificate of Merit, and he starts mugging for the camera like he's won Publishers Clearing House. Gee whiz. Maybe you can teach an old dog new tricks.

Anyway, I've decompressed by spending the last few hours watching humorous and notable game show clips on Youtube. If I've learned one thing, it's that Drew Carey will never be Bob Barker, no, siree, Bob.

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Whoa, Nellie! Lookout, Dawgs! It's a stampede!

Please note that no Dawgs were hurt during the making of this picture. Colorado brought their 900 pound buffalo mascot, Ralphie IV, to Athens to lead the team onto the field. (Ralphie IV, by the way, was donated to Colorado by Ted Turner.) Earlier this week UGA athletic marketing director John Bateman told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "It's David and Goliath. But what's that old saying, 'It's not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog'?"

Bulldogs, by the way, were originally bred for -- what else? -- fighting bulls. Ralphie IV, however, is not a bull but a female buffalo. That should have been our first clue that we were in trouble.

We played like we didn't understand the game for 3 quarters, only to pull it together in the final 10 minutes of play for the victory. The entire game was a demonstration in coaching: be Dan Hawkins' play selection and execution in the 1st half, be Mark Richt's strategic determination in the 4th quarter. (Just plain be somewhere else for the third quarter.)

Colorado's excellent ball fakes kept our undisciplined defense confused. Meanwhile our offense decided to go pass-happy with our true freshman quarterback, ignoring the 3 talented runners that have won us the last 3 games. (I call this Tommy Tuberville Syndome after Auburn's similar bizarre and losing strategy with Cadillac Williams and Ronnie Brown three years ago.)

I should have taken a picture of the guy who sits next to me. He looked like he was going to have a stroke for the final hour of the game.

In the end, we won. And it was exciting. But I don't exactly want to go through this every week.

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An hour ago I opened Photoshop to do a little touch up to some pictures I was using for the intro animation here at wriphe.com. (It's still only about 1/2 way done and I'm not sure I like it so far, so I might start over. Again.) Somehow I got distracted and instead made this:

There just aren't enough poodle pictures around this site yet. I'll soon fix that!

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A friend emailed me a link to spandexman.com, and I couldn't help playing with some of the pictures there. He's got unitards of all sorts, including Spider-Man and Superman costumes. I wish I could make things like that. All I can do is create digital pictures of things that don't exist. That doesn't exactly feed you in the woods, know what I'm saying?

Damn, I wish I looked that good in a unitard. Spandex Man gets 2 thumbs up.

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