This could have been bad: According to an excerpt from Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry by Marc Ambinder and D.B. Grady, a Secret Service agent accidentally discharged his shotgun outside New York's InterContinental Hotel in fall 2006, nearly shooting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the process. The incident took place during the United Nations General Assembly and was described in a brief item in one of President George W. Bush's daily intelligence briefs.

According to one official, it began, "A U.S. Secret Service agent, in an apparent accident, discharged his shotgun as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was loading his motorcade at the InterContinental Hotel yesterday."

At the time, the Bush administration was weighing how to deal with the Iranian nuclear-weapons program. And here a Secret Service agent had just given Iran a potentially devastating public-relations coup. Ahmadinejad was certain to reveal the accident in some grand form before the whole of the United Nations. He might allege that the United States had tried to assassinate him, and thus upend the entire conference. "When I read that, I remember closing my eyes," recalls the official.

The agent was adjusting the side-mounted shotgun on one of the motorcade's armored follow-up Suburbans when it discharged. "Everyone just stopped. The Iranians looked at us and we looked at the Iranians. The agent began to apologize. Ahmadinejad just turned his head and got into his car." And that was it.

Good to know. If you want George W. Bush's personal take on the incident, you could always ask him yourself.

[The Atlantic/Image via AP]

Hours before Gov. John Hickenlooper, surrounded by family members of victims of shootings in Aurora and Littleton, signed a package of contentious gun control bills, Colorado's top prison official was shot and killed in front of his home. Tom Clements, 58, had been appointed executive director of Colorado Prisons in January 2011, and had won praise from officials and activists for his commitment to reform; Tuesday night at around 8:30, he answered his front door and was killed by an unknown gunman. Police have no suspects, but prisons have been placed on a partial lock-down and security has been increased at the state capitol and the governor's mansion. In an emotional press conference, Hickenlooper called Clements' murder "an act of intimidation." Hours later, the governor signed a series of new laws requiring background checks for private gun sales and banning magazines with more than 15 rounds, the end result of a long and emotional process. "I started crying," Tom Mauser—whose son was killed at Columbine High in 1999—told The New York Times. [Denver Post | Denver CBS | NYT]

Gainesville mayor Craig Lowe was arrested early this morning by Florida Highway Patrol troopers after he was found asleep behind the wheel of a badly damaged Honda Civic near the scene of an accident.

Lowe, who appeared intoxicated, admitted to having had three beers the previous night.

A blood alcohol test performed at the scene showed Lowe was below the legal limit for driving (0.08), but the troopers decided to arrest him on a DUI charge on the basis of his impairment at the time of the crash.

Lowe was also booked into the Alachua County Jail on a charge of property damage.

Gatorville's first openly gay mayor, Lowe came in second in this week's mayoral election, and is set to face former City Commissioner Ed Braddy in next month's runoff.

UPDATE: As noted by a commenter, Lowe's rival Braddy was similarly arrested for drunk driving back in 2006. Unlike Lowe, however, Braddy's blood-alcohol level at the time was 0.184 — well above the legal limit.

[mug shot via ABC Action News]

You are looking at, more or less, a portrait of the internet over an average 24 hours in 2012—higher usage in yellows and reds; lower in greens and blues—created by an anonymous researcher for the "Internet Census 2012" project. How, exactly, do you gather this much data? Well: not legally, that's for sure.

In order to track the geographical location and usage patterns of the internet, our researcher created a "botnet"—a network of nearly half a million hacked computers, chosen from a selection of Linux machines with no or default passwords, pinging everything they could and reporting back. The researcher says one of the chief concerns of the project was to "be nice"—"[W]e did not change passwords and did not make any permanent changes... We also uploaded a readme file containing a short explanation of the project as well as a contact email address"—but the botnet, dubbed "Carna," was ultimately highly illegal.

It's also not quite comprehensive. The computers being pinged to gather the data were limited to to IPv4 address space—leaving out the newer IPv6 protocol. But it still paints a extensive picture of the geographical internet. Here's another map showing the location of reachable computers across the world:

The full report is here.

[Internet Census 2012 via Motherboard]

Update: some confusing wording about what the botnet was and did has been clarified.

The city of Saratoga Springs, New York has a problem: homelessness. I mean, the problem is not that Saratoga Springs residents are forced to sleep on the streets—the problem is these homeless citizens are sleeping in City Hall. How are the city fathers supposed to conduct their important business of helping out Saratoga Springs citizens when those citizens are being all, like, dirty in their space?

City Hall—which is housed in the same building as the Police Department—stays open late sometimes, for public meetings and whatnot. And every once in a while, people who don't even have the common decency to pay a mortgage wander in and pass out somewhere. Allowing the public to just waltz right in any old time clearly cannot be tolerated in a building designated to doing the public's business.

"We even have people who come to our counter in Public Safety who are irate and agitated," [Public Safety Commissioner Christian] Mathiesen said, adding the building should have a centralized check-in location for visitors. He said motion detectors are something they could consider, but long term, a comprehensive review of the building's security would be needed.

[Public Works Commissioner Anthony] Scirocco said the layout of the building with three entrances would make that difficult. "We'll probably have to hire a consultant," he said.

REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS: Consultant needed to devise plan to A) Keep public away from "Public Safety" counter, and B) Completely seal off city hall from infiltration by the public.

If only they had some of them dang Homeland Security funds.

[The Saratogian. Photo: Doug Kerr/ Flickr]

Meticulously scruffy smirker Ryan Gosling has announced in an interview that he is taking brief professional hiatus from acting:

"I've been doing it too much. I've lost perspective on what I'm doing. I think it's good for me to take a break and reassess why I'm doing it and how I'm doing it. And I think this is probably a good way to learn about that."

Gosling did not choose to just quietly take a break and then return whenever he had sorted himself out. He made an announcement—look at me, while I unwind and mull over my life! He presented his decision as an artistic choice to "reassess" his craft (he didn't say craft, but you know… it was lurking).

"The more opportunities I'm given, the more I learn about how easy it is to [expletive] it up. You fight for freedom and then you get it, and then you have enough rope to hang yourself. It's like trying to exercise some restraint because I do have so much freedom."

Yes, heaven forbid someone thinks that maybe he's not being offered good parts. Because he definitely is—lots of good parts, he just, you know, he has to play hard to get for a little bit.

"I don't know what I'm doing. I haven't quite figured out what the balance is between being able to be lost in it — or try to, anyway — and then step outside of it...I need a break from myself as much as I imagine the audience does."

Yes, Ryan's fan base, one that made an entire meme about his imagined feminist opinions and another about the actor simply greeting them casually, is crying for a break after the zero movies he starred in during 2012.

Granted, 2012 was most likely a busy year for the baby-duck-named actor, who has been romping about in the entertainment business since he was eight. The cartoonish-noir mush Gangster Squad premiered in January, The Place Beyond the Pines premieres late this month, and his second collaboration with his Drive director Nicolas Winding-Refn, Only God Forgives, should be released in Europe in May. So there will certainly be time to catch a fill of the artfully unkempt charmer's wiles even during his little sojourn.

[Us Magazine, image via Getty]

Last night's episode of My Strange Addiction was the show's fourth-season finale (I'm already mourning) and boy it was a doozy. The entire half hour was devoted to Michelle, a 29-year-old resident of Lancaster, Calif., with a Jane Child ear-to-nose chain situation and an affinity for drinking animal blood and human blood. Michelle is a tattoo artist but not a vampire. She prefers pig's blood to beef blood because it's gamier. She reports that every human's blood tastes different, there is a difference between men and women's blood (men's is thicker) and that she generally extracts it from the upper arm, elbow area, upper back or inner thigh. "I try to avoid the neck 'cause that's way too cliché," says Michelle. And here I thought that Shoshanna telling Ray on Girls that "Sometimes I love you like I feel sorry for a monkey" would be the best thing I heard anyone say on TV this week.

When it comes to gore in general and this show in particular, I tend to have an iron-clad stomach, but I felt a little queasy as Michelle went on and on about the right temperature (if blood is too warm, it gets gelatinous), her bloody Mary recipe (guess the secret ingredient!) and blood's general "ambiance." That said, I did find myself, midway through watching, fixing myself chips and salsa. The salsa was highly blended, way more smooth than chunky. I think I know what Michelle means about "ambiance."

The clip reel above will be something of an endurance test for people who don't enjoy the non-gelatinous ambiance of blood, but I would implore you to at least skip to the very end when Michelle comes out to her mother and her mother tells her that drinking blood is "weird...even for you it's weird."

There's no use fighting it: The 21st century belongs to China.

Exhibits A thru Z: The Sausage Double Beef Burger from McDonald's China.

That's right, McDonald's. A company that's supposed to be as American as fried apple pie has introduced a menu item in China that makes its stateside counterparts seem like cheap knock-offs.

From Brand Eating:

The [Sausage Double Beef Burger] is pretty much meat and bun. Specifically, it's two sausages, two beef patties, and mustard on what looks to be a pretzel hamburger bun.

The sandwich will only be around for a limited time, but the hegemonic aftertaste will last at least another 87 years.

[image via Brand Eating]

Last night, Discovery aired KKK: Beneath the Hood, a documentary that purported to offer previously unavailable access to various Ku Klux Klan chapters. Such unveiling feels like an act of desperation for a dying breed of people who are irrationally fixated on racial purity and white supremacy while claiming that they don't hate anyone. Bigotry is alive, of course, but I wonder how well it is when even the Klan is too cowardly to own up to its hatred. (Note: Hamilton Nolan's "My Kasual Kountry Weekend With the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan" Gawker story from last year touches on this very phenomenon.)

In the clip above, they hand out sandwiches and various household items in Missouri to show what good guys they are. Basically, they are preying on the impoverished to reseed their losing agenda. Great guys. Nonetheless, their plan seems to work — the few people that turn out for the event, including the police, seem delighted. To put the philosophy of the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan into perspective, Imperial Wizard Frank Ancona explains to the cops, "You got different types of birds like crows, sparrows. They stay with their own kind. But they're all birds. So that's kind of our view on it."

The organization that takes its social cues from birds. Maybe one day they'll figure out how to turn a twig into a tool. And then you'll be sorry that you didn't join when you had the chance.

Police in Taiwan apprehended a man wanted on drug charges after he unwittingly wore a shirt that drew attention to the fact that he was a fugitive.

According to a local police spokesman, the suspect, identified as Wu, was spotted by officers in the town of Huwei wearing a shirt with the word "wanted."

One of the officers who recognized the word approached Wu and asked him to explain its significance.

Wu told the officer he spoke no English and had no idea what the shirt — a gift from his son — actually said.

Unfortunately for him, the officer decided to run a background check on Wu, and discovered that he was actually a wanted man.

Wu later said that, had he known what the "wanted" meant, he wouldn't have worn the shirt.

[H/T: MSN Now, photo via Zazzle]

In socialist Europe, where the hard work and financial innovation of bankers is not as appreciated as it is here, times are tough: bankers have just had their bonuses limited by law. How to deal with this new, slightly less opulent reality? An unintentionally hilarious listicle is here to help.

The real website eFinancialCareers, a sort of Mediabistro for finance types, has published an early candidate for Best Service Journalism Story Ever Published in Earth's Long History, entitled "Twenty money-saving tips from bankers and their wives." And their wives. "Both bankers and their once free-spending wives are suddenly becoming familiar with the art of thriftiness," we're told. Oh ho! Please enjoy just a few of the money-saving ideas you may not have even considered. They're not just for bankers.

5. Change your travel habits

Eli Lederman, a former managing director at Morgan Stanley who has reinvented himself as an author, said he's ditched business class flights. "I still go to New York five or six times per year, but now I forego business class to travel in premium economy," he said.

On your half dozen annual international flights, why not try the premium section slightly below first class? If you pack your foie gras at home, you'll barely notice the difference.

6. Start ironing

This may sound like a small thing, but while they're working most bankers do not iron their own shirts...
"The wife is doing the ironing," another banker told us. "She's not loving it, but she doesn't want to get a job herself so is having to accept it."

(Good way for the wives to pitch in!)

7. Don't carry so much cash

The more money you have in your pocket, the more you will want to spend it. "Stop carrying a wedge of cash around with you," said the ex-Goldman banker. "It reduces the temptation to tip people so much."

Tips for lowly service workers should be the first place you cut back.

9. Stop skiing, or ski more cheaply

Self-explanatory.

11. Sell the second home

Anecdotally, this isn't happening much yet – but it could start happening soon.

Jesus. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

[eFinancialCareers via Kevin Roose. Image: yampi / Shutterstock.com]

Fat dick Roger Ailes is the subject of a deeply, deeply terrible new biography by magazine writer Zev Chafets. You can gauge its value by the fact that Chafets saw fit to acknowledge his "debt" to Fox News chief flack Brian Lewis, who, when he's not busy feeding Chafets bullshit about Roger Ailes, has been orchestrating a smear campaign against people who are writing less adoring biographies of Fox's Dear Leader. It took me about 30 minutes of reading before I came across the book's first documentable lie from Ailes: His claim that he was never paid to be Richard Nixon's message guru and tie-picker.

In Chafets' exceedingly sparse and cursory recounting of Ailes' time managing Nixon's television persona, he claims that Ailes' role didn't constitute a "real job at the White House":

From time to time he was summoned by the White House to undertake special assignments...but he did these things pro bono. "I never even took a per diem, let alone payment," Ailes told me. "I didn't want to tell my kid someday that I had been on the government payroll."

That is a lie. Roger Ailes was paid a $150 per diem by the White House for his extensive services as Nixon's image consultant. (That's roughly $900 per day in 2013 dollars.) Below is a March 1970 memo from Nixon chief of staff H.R. Haldeman to his assistant Larry Higby discussing the prospect of giving Ailes a raise, over and above his White House pay, in the form of "additional outside compensation" (presumably from either other GOP institutions or one of Nixon's slush funds). It makes clear that, as of March 1970, the White House "presently pay[s] him $100/day plus expenses." A handwritten note corrects that figure to $150.

Eight months later, in a memo Ailes wrote to Haldeman, Ailes complained that he wasn't getting paid enough by the White House, and asked for help getting a "longer range consultancy" with the Republican National Committee, because "per diem work" didn't allow for the "flexibility" he needed.

A little over a year after that, a memo to Ailes from Nixon assistant Jon M. Huntsman (father of the vanity GOP presidential candidate), announced that an office was being set aside, "adjacent to the President's office," for Ailes to use during his White House visits. Secretarial assistance was also to be provided.

To recap: According to contemporaneous documents from Ailes' days in the Nixon White House, he was paid a per diem rate of roughly $900 in 2013 dollars, he asked the White House for more money, and he had an office there. According to Roger Ailes, he "never even took a per diem" because he "didn't want to tell [his] kid someday that [he] had been on the government payroll."

Does it matter that Ailes was paid by the Nixon White House? No. But it's beyond bizarre that he would elect, for no good reason, to lie about it. His self-delusional role as some sort of outsider to power is so gargantuan that he can't even abide the utterly routine matter of having been paid by the government for his services.

How did I find these memos? I looked on the internet! They are right here, published by Gawker two years ago. I obtained them from the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, which sent me more than 300 pages of material concerning Ailes' work for Nixon. I wrote about it at the time. If you Google "Richard Nixon Roger Ailes," that story is the fourth search result. A Washington Post story referring to the documents is the third search result. Any reporter with even a passing curiosity about how Ailes conducted himself while working for the Nixon White House would presumably have come across them. Chafets, it would seem, did not.

[Images via Getty and AP]

A freak hail storm passed over Brookshire, Texas, early yesterday morning, dumping thousands of stones, some as large as quarters.

The damage to property was pretty extensive, but from the rubble rose a cry of reassurance that this too shall pass: KABOOYOW!

Coined by resident Michelle Clark during a post-storm interview with Click2Houston, the catchphrase is certain to be heard far and wide for days and months to come, through autotunes and local dental practice ads and where-are-they-now roundups on VH1.

In the end, we must ask ourselves: If Andy Warhol were alive today, would he get his 15 minutes of fame?

[video via Comedy Wizard]

The man who introduced the CIA's Chief Technology Officer, Ira "Gus" Hunt, at yesterday's GigaOM Structure:Data conference in New York City thought it would be funny to quip, "If you don't give a big round of applause for our next speaker, he's gonna find out and it's gonna go on your permanent record." It was supposed to be a little joke, but then Hunt took the stage for his speech on "Big Data," told everyone that the CIA is now attempting to "collect everything and hang on to it forever," and suddenly it wasn't so funny anymore.

Speaking before PowerPoint slides reading things like "It is nearly within our grasp to compute on all human generated information," Hunt explained very matter-of-factly that it is the CIA's intention to capture and keep every bit of data citizens now casually and openly share with the world.

"The value of any piece of information is only known when you can connect it with something else that arrives at a future point in time," Hunt said. "Since you can't connect dots you don't have, it drives us into a mode of, we fundamentally try to collect everything and hang on to it forever." (Hunt added that "forever" was in quotes in that sentence.)

One of the CIA's goals, said Hunt, is to be able to use its massive data culls to connect people the same way an Excel spreadsheet connects numbers. "We want a tool, say for people ... that explains to me how all these people are related in any number of different ways," he said.

According to the Huffington Post, Hunt also noted that people should be aware they are "walking sensor platforms":

"You're already a walking sensor platform," he said, nothing that mobiles, smartphones and iPads come with cameras, accelerometers, light detectors and geolocation capabilities.

"You are aware of the fact that somebody can know where you are at all times, because you carry a mobile device, even if that mobile device is turned off," he said. "You know this, I hope? Yes? Well, you should."

Hunt's speech comes on the heels of the recent announcement that the CIA has inked a $600 million deal with Amazon for cloud computing capabilities over the next decade. Though a CIA spokesperson wouldn't go into the specifics of the Amazon deal, telling Federal Computer Week "the CIA does not publicly disclose details of our contracts," Hunt said yesterday that the CIA is interested in "peta-scale" supercomputing. A petabyte is equal to 1,125,899,906,842,624 bytes.

In the final moments of his address, Hunt used about 10 seconds to touch on privacy rights. "What's happened is that technology in this world is moving faster than government or law can keep up," he said. "It's moving faster, I would argue, than you can keep up. You should be asking the question of what are your rights and who owns your data. This is a question that I argue you ought to put on the table."

Yes, we certainly ought to.

[Image via Livestream]

If you were hoping to pick up a cat-skin rug for your mancave through the Kiwi auction site Trade Me, it seems you're out of luck. The last one has just been sold to the highest bidder for NZ$955 (~USD$800).

Andrew Lancaster, the taxidermist behind this monstrosity, told local media outlets he spotted the roadkill cat by the side of the road last month, and thought it looked nice enough to stuff.

"I was sort of in two minds about whether to do it and then I thought 'it's a perfect specimen'," Lancaster, a Brit by birth, told Stuff.co.nz. "So that was my first thought - just turn it into a rug like I do with the possums."

Many of Lancaster's creations end up on Trade Me — rabbits, weasels, magpies, even goldfish — but he says the cat-skin rug was a first for him.

"I usually sort of steer clear of cats and dogs because you get a lot of people who say they're pets and should be left alone and not stuffed," Lancaster said.

Many of the site's users felt he should have kept to that policy, blasting his "art" as "disgusting" and "sick." A rep for the anti-animal-euthanasia group SAFE called the rug "distasteful" and "disrespectful."

Others, however, were far more supportive, including one self-described "vegetarian animal lover and collector of vintage Victorian taxidermy."

"I'm not offended at all by this art installation and would encourage those that are offended by this to question themselves why," the user wrote. "[T]his was created from a long dead animal. Upcycling!"

[photos via Trade Me]

In a move that is predicted to tip the balance of power in the entire U.S. fast food industry and spark an advertising war between top players that could cost hundreds of millions of dollars, McDonald's is set to roll out the "biggest launch of 2013," which will reach into every corner of American dining culture: some chicken wrapped up in a tortilla.

The iconic $100 billion food company will also add some lettuce and ranch dressing to that shit.

Despite not being a sandwich, the "McWrap," a product resembling a dish that an extremely high college sophomore would make using the only four ingredients left in the refrigerator, is seen by McDonald's as "the biggest opportunity for the chain to take share in the sandwich category this year." The astoundingly bland and dry version of a cold and empty burrito will attract millions of customers and move the stock price of this multinational corporation ever higher.

Needless to say, "it will be marketed as a premium product."

Is America ready for this exotic Mexican food?

[Ad Age. Photo: Flickr]

A woman in Taiwan recently divorced her husband, citing irreconcilable differences. Namely, the difference between what she expected his penis size to be, and what it ultimately was.

The couple, identified as Zhang and Zhou, met about five years ago, and dated for five months before deciding to tie the knot.

Zhou, a 55-year-old civil servant, allegedly refused to have sex before marriage, claiming he believed in one of those religions where premarital sex is a sin.

But come their wedding night, Zhang realized she probably should have insisted on trying before buying.

"His penis is so small, like a kid's, only 5cm [2"] long," the 52-year-old told a local paper.

Worse still for Zhang — who says she was promised sex at least three times a week — her new husband was also impotent. "We quarreled the whole night and I asked him to seek treatment," she said.

The two immediately separated, but tried to make it work several times since with little luck. Eventually, Zhang filed for divorce, and Zhou gave up any effort to salvage his marriage.

For his part, Zhou says his erectile dysfunction isn't even medical — it's elective.

"I prefer to have sex in the morning but she wanted it around midnight, by then I would be very tired," he is quoted as saying.

A similar case involving a Taiwanese woman who had filed for divorce over her husband penis size made headlines four years ago.

In that instance, however, the court rejected the woman's request, saying penis size was "very subjective."

[photo via Shutterstock]

What is the ultimate representation of the magnificence that is our complex, dynamic, and hugely mysterious planet Earth? Could it be something as simple as the laughter of children? Is it our wondrous oceans? Or is it an intangible quality, like the fact that humans continue to labor toward improvement despite the fact that there appears to be no real reason to survive, and that our existences and everything we do are almost comically pointless? It could be any of those things, really, or none of them, depending on who you ask. For if you talk to Texas Congressman Steve Stockman about what the best thing about Earth is, he'll give you a different answer altogether:

What a thoughtful and bright man they've elected to represent them in Texas' 36th District.

In surely unrelated news, "oil and gas" was the second largest industry donor to Stockman's campaign from 2011 to 2012.

[Image via Flickr user Gage Skidmore]

A Canadian man who finally got a good handle on an annoying itch he'd been scratching at for the past three years accidentally uncovered the source of irritation: A knife blade that got stuck in his back in 2010.

Billy McNeely, a 32-year-old who lives near the appropriately named city of Yellowknife, remembers well the night he got stabbed.

He was attending a birthday party in his honor when an arm-wrestling contest resulted in a fight that ended with him being shanked five times.

McNeely says the doctors who stitched him up never ordered any X-rays, which is how the blade was missed.

But the subsequent pain and irritation couldn't be ignored. "I always had back pains," McNeely told the Canadian Press. "There was always a burning feeling with it."

One night earlier this week, while rubbing and scratching at the lump in his back, McNeely suddenly hit something sharp.

"My girlfriend got up and she started playing around with it and she manoeuvred my back in a certain way and the tip of a blade poked out of my skin," he recalled.

McNeely rushed to the hospital, where doctors found a seven-centimeter-long (2.5") blade lodged in his back.

Though McNeely is certainly happier now that he's blade-free, he is still pretty upset about the fact that it was left in his body for so long.

Thinking back on it now, McNeely recalled setting off metal detectors without knowing why. "They should've X-rayed right off the beginning in case there was internal damage," McNeely told CBC.

He has reportedly contacted a lawyer, and is considering filing a lawsuit against the local health system.

[screengrab via CBC]

A watermelon, viewed from above, casts a greenish shadow on a white table. Two small figures on a putting green are spied from behind a distant tree. A horse with cow-like markings stands in field. Dogs, of course: a Shih Tzu and a Boxer sitting against an electric blue void. A Sheepdog next to a ball. A Corgi and a Lab at awkward, physically impossible angles, splayed out against the ground. And some kind of hound mix, maybe, grey and monstrous, sitting outside the White House, separated from the seat of power by iron bars, staring ambivalently out of frame.

This is the art of the 43rd president.

Gawker has obtained more photographs of George W. Bush's paintings, originally taken from the former president and his family's email accounts by a hacker using the name "Guccifer," and this may be the most interesting batch yet. A mix of landscapes, still lifes, and animal portraits (a subject he returns to time and again) these paintings show a burgeoning, sensitive artist stretching his painterly muscle—toying with perspective, experimenting with color, and giving his work symbolic and thematic heft.

Here is the best of the bunch, and maybe his masterpiece: an odd, even monstrous-looking dog, sitting yards away from the president's former home, but kept away from it by thick iron bars. Unlike most of Bush's dogs, this one looks away from the viewer. What is it thinking? What is it doing? Are the bars the White House fence—or something more sinister?

Here, some kind of canyon, and a watermelon on a bizarrely-angled table:

More odd angles in this painting of two dogs—are they laying down? Resting? Playing?

A golf course landscape places the viewer in an odd, Peeping Tom position watching two putter from behind a tree:

A still life of grapes:

A house painted in a jarring odd, multi-perspective stye:

A black-spotted horse in a field. There is an interesting persistent rightward motion to this painting.

An autumn landscape:

A shaggy dog with ball:

Another sunset—nearly as popular a subject for the artist as dogs:

Yet more dogs: