"Cow Licking."

I've been a huge admirer of Georgia O'Keeffe since I first saw the Life Magazine article "Georgia O'Keeffe, on the Ghost Ranch." That was 1968, and I was 17. I've looked at so many of her pictures, in person and in books, but I had never seen "Cow Licking" until this morning. 

I love it. Don't you? But let me tell you how I happened to run across it this morning. It was 5:43 a.m., and I'd been downstairs in breakfast-and-blog mode for a while when I got this text from upstairs:

Well, the Book of Leviticus and Deuteronomy
The law of the jungle and the sea are your only teachers
In the smoke of the twilight on a milk-white steed
Michelangelo indeed could've carved out your features
Resting in the fields, far from the turbulent space
Half asleep near the stars with a small dog licking your face

I know what that is. It's Meade, sending me a Bob Dylan lyric and boldfacing the part about a small dog licking the face of whoever "you" is. Who is this person whose only teachers — law professors — are Leviticus, Deuteronomy, the jungle, and the sea? He rode in on a white horse, he's buff and handsome, and now he's lolling about in a field with a small dog licking his face. Maybe you remember being told that this song, "Jokerman," is about Jesus.

I don't know about that. I see that Dylan said it was something "mystical" that came upon him down there in the Caribbean — something "inspired by these spirits they call jumbis."

I didn't get far into that because Meade texted "What is that famous painting?" And he didn't mean that Dürer painting that is the first image in the "Jokerman" video, that image that just about everyone thinks is Jesus but is the artist himself, Albrecht Dürer:

Meade was thinking about something else: "Black man, lying supine on desert sand with stars above and a small dog."

I immediately thought of Henri Rousseau's "Sleeping Gypsy":

Yes, that's not a dog. It made me think of this scene in a Chaplin movie I'd watched upstairs last night while Meade was watching basketball downstairs:

Texting this morning from upstairs, Meade thought it might be a different Rousseau painting. I found "La Noce," which has a "comically oversized and awkward" dog that, we're told, takes "the eye deep into the composition" and asserts the artist's "position as the master of spatial paradox."

I text-typo'd "that’s the only rousseau with a god that i found."

I asked Grok, "What's that famous painting with a dog licking a person's face." And then "Is there ANY famous painting showing any kind of tongue-licking?" and "Dog or person or other animal — now I'm just looking for licking. I'm thinking licking isn't seen as something worth painting — too in-the-moment and active to be frozen into a still image. But maybe somebody did it. All I can think of is that Rolling Stones logo."

And that's how I found "Cow Licking."

UNANSWERED QUESTION: Why did Meade send me that Dylan lyric and boldface "with a small dog licking your face"? I think it had something to do with the rumor that Mayor Mamdani has a secret plan to run all the dogs out of New York City.

Juiciest dog rumor since "They're eating the dogs."

Cooking up the Thanksgiving eyeballs.

Here I am searching the internet for some good instructions on how to make vegetable broth -- this looks helpful -- and suddenly I see that Secular Right noticed my link earlier in the day and decided to greet me with a post illustrating that peevish old Albrecht Durer prayer goading God to make the unbelievers "pluck out their own eyes and cook them in a holy broth."

Correlating politics to belief in God.

From the new blog Secular Right ... which John Derbyshire was promoting at The Corner:

I have got together with a handful of other conservative unbelievers and we have started a blog, Secular Right...

I'm blogging on the site as "Bradlaugh," in honor of my home town.

A welcome addition to the Blogroll. Note that they are unbelievers, not just people who favor the separation of religion and state.

"Conservative unbelievers" is a weird phrase, unintentionally suggesting a lack of belief in conservatism. Why not say conservative atheists?

IN THE COMMENTS: Some people hate that graph, and some see the face of Jesus in it. Graph that! DHP normalizes it:


Did you recognize that it needed normalizing?

Balfegor addressed the use of the word "unbeliever":

I think it's intended to be an ironic appropriation of a term used by believers to describe people who do not believe. See, e.g. this apparently unironical use of the term "unbeliever." (it's the first hit that comes up on Google). I'm actually a little surprised that the word is still current in its original non-ironic useage -- I thought it had fallen out of general use decades ago, along with "infidel," "heathen," and "pagan."

Anyhow, it's a jab -- or a stab, if you like -- but it's a jab back.

He adds this quote from Albrecht Durer:

O God please smite the unbelievers with your holy wrath. Make them as toads in the garden eating dirty flies. Let them pluck out their own eyes and cook them in a holy broth.

Sorry, Albrecht! We're going vegetarian this Thanksgiving. And we prefer renewable local foods.

AND: "I appreciate the 'annalanche' from putting up my normalized data, but it is dbp, not dhp. Just think, dustless black pepper." LOL. I'm glad someone remembers dustless black pepper. That epitomized an afternoon of office ennui.