Car wash

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A turtle swims through a make-shift underwater car wash, surrounded by a bright shoal of yellow tangs eager to rid him of algae that had collected on his shell. Photographer Masa Ushioda captured the sight off the coast of Kailua Kona, in Hawaii.
[Masa Ushioda/SeaPics.com/solent]

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On a related matter –  I found this at IOZ,

Operation Barkarossa

Those who think I view the Occupy folks in too rosy a light may have a point, although, as with my view of the Tea Party wheezers, a positive opinion shouldn’t be taken as a wholesale endorsement.  Nevertheless, I defy anyone to tell me that this isn’t fucking awesome.

…when the city of Denver insisted that Denver Occupy HAD HAD HAD to select someone to speak and meet with the mayor (no doubt some Democrat, they hold a few cities in their portfolio, snicker):

Denver Mayor Michael Hancock insisted that his city’s occupation name a leader in order “to deal with City and State officials.” And he got his wish! Occupy Denver has elected Shelby, a border collie, as its leader. Long live Shelby!

Shelby, on whose noble visage you can gaze here, was elected in a “landslide vote” on Sunday night. One of Occupy Denver’s organizers, Al Nesby, was inspired to nominate Shelby to the position after the director Michael Moore showed up one day and rubbed him the wrong way by refusing to follow general assembly rules; with Shelby, who’s three and a half, the occupation should have no such problems. Her bodyguard and closest confidante is a filmmaker named Peter John Jentsch

 . . . .

Protesters have already made an official request for Shelby to meet with Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper

A lovely sense of the absurd.

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Lastly.. in a shameless act of plagiarism (on my part!)…. this wonderful graf again from IOZ on Occupy:

[T]his is why I really like this whole Occupy dealio.  As one eminent blurgher said, Occupy Wall Street is no revolution.  I love their absence of a program and agenda, their lack of leaders and, at least to-date, their charmed indifference to calls on all sides for them to get such things.  I think that packing a tent and sitting your ass down and not moving is just great.  I think it’s exactly what this country needs.  I think that it is at heart and root a contemplative practice.   I think those kids are transmitting the grace-waves of beneficence to the rest of humanity.  I think that the very act of abjuring traditional activism is necessary and ingenious.  I also think that Occupy, or something very much like it, would have inexorably occurred five years ago or ten years hence, one way or other; that this moment I so admire is both specific and inevitable.  I’m jealous that I didn’t dream it up.  But the thing is: someone was certain to dream it up.  . . . .

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