Lazy day with crummy weather. Good day to take it easy. Head on over to road warrior rules for survival and identify your favorite black and white movie. Tammi only asked for one favorite, but so far, everyone, including Tammi, has broken that rule.

Note: If the permalink doesn’t work scroll down to “Saturday Question of the Day.” It worked for me, but as a former BlogSpotter, I know that the permalinks crater often and without warning.

Today, after reading about lagomorphs at A Secular Franciscan Life, I got to thinking about one of the most well known lagomorphs (with possible exception of “Bugs” the “What’s-up-Doc?” lagomorph). Of course, that would be the Easter Bunny.

Although I believed in Santa Claus far longer than I probably should have (I had no brothers or sisters to take joy in bursting my bubble), I never really bought into the Easter Bunny thing. After all, Santa was a human being, and I was prepared to suspend my doubts about the flying reindeer, the digs in the North Pole, and the amazing speed at which he would have had to work on Christmas Eve in order to make all his stops.

The Easter Bunny was quite a different matter. My first remembrance of the Easter Lagomorph was being hoisted onto the lap of a six-foot rabbit (seven and one half feet, if you count the ears) in a local department store. As I recall, the experience scared the dog shit out of me. It was frightening enough to find myself in the clutches of a huge rabbit, but things went straight into the dumper when I heard the damned thing talk! I suspect it asked me what I wanted for Easter, as if there was an option other than an Easter Basket full of candy. However, I don’t remember exactly what the large rabbit said, for I was pre-occupied with trying to figure out why my mother had surrendered me to a large, fuzzy, talking animal.

After a moment or two on the creature’s lap, I noticed that somewhere under the large beast’s nose was a wire mesh, behind which I could see the outline of a real person inside. So, early on, I knew that the Easter Bunny was so much baloney. Sure, my mother tried to convince me that the Easter Bunny was the real deal, but I wasn’t having it.

For one thing, unlike Santa, the Easter Bunny lacked any means of transportation, which would be essential to allow him/her/it (the sex of the Easter Bunny was also never quite clear to me) to drop off all those Easter baskets to all those houses. Plus, as if a talking rabbit wasn’t crazy enough, the Easter Bunny I had my picture taken with those many years ago spoke with a Jersey accent.

Had I taken just a bit of initiative (and maybe had been a few years older), I would have learned that the Easter Bunny traces its roots to an Anglo-Saxon pagan festival that celebrated the coming of spring by worshipping the goddess “Eastre” through her earth symbol, the rabbit. Because the pagan celebration roughly coincided with the date on which the resurrection was celebrated by Christians, “Eastre” became a handy way for the Christians to ease the pagans into celebrating the resurrection of Christ.

I would have also learned that the Easter Rabbit was introduced to the U.S. by German immigrants. It was not until after the Civil War that Christians in America paid any attention to the Easter Bunny, or Easter itself, for that matter.

But, I had no such initiative. I didn’t much care about the history of the Easter Bunny. I was satisfied just knowing that Santa was real and that the Easter Bunny was bullshit.

Besides, I never much cared for candy anyway.

Yesterday I updated Da Blogroll, and I neglected to add Miss Apropos, who is definitely a classy lady. Why do I think I know her from somewhere in my past?

I’ve added three new sites to Da Blogroll. If you don’t read them already, you might want to check out the following:

road warrior rules for survival. Tammi is new to blogging, but I understand that she is not new to the blogosphere, having been a regular commenter on other blogs. Once she fired up a blog of her own, she hit the ground running. It has become one of my regular reads.

A Secular Franciscan Life. By my count, Randy will be the fifth Montana blogger on Da Blogroll. There must be something about that state that produces good bloggers. It must be all that clean air, which is something that I fear would make me lightheaded.

Protein Wisdom For me, Jeff’s site was a recent discovery and an instant hit. Good stuff there.

While celebrating my having gorilla-stomped the farookin’ Evil Button, it occurred to me that I actually have buttons. I forgot I had them, because when I received them (from the person who designed my logo), I had no idea what I or anyone else would do with them.

So, freshly dusted off from the bowels of my C Drive (It makes me tingle to talk so technical), I give you DA BUTTONS.

Here is a brown one.

And, here’s a white one (a backup, in case I ended up with a white blog).

Do with them what you will. I think they make excellent Easter presents or snappy lapel pins.

For my part, I just want to stare, in ore, at them.

For the past thirty minutes I have been listening to “Air America,” the Liberal Talk Network. Janeane Garafolo and her co-host Sam Seder have been interviewing Dave Chappelle, the comedian.

Ms. Garafolo asked Mr. Chappelle a barely coherent question about whether terms like “partial birth abortion” and “death taxes,” which according to Ms. Garafolo, are innacurate and are employed by the members of the VRWC soley to inflame conservative “crackers,” bother Mr. Chappelle as much as they bother intellectuals like her.

Mr. Chappelle responded by telling an even more incoherent story about being hassled at an airport for not following the rules. Huh?

Now Playing…Ben Cohen, of “Ben and Jerry’s” fame, who made about as much sense as the average eight-year old.

I suppose that it is logically possible to be stupid as the day is long but still be entertaining. However, Janeane et al. are long on stupid and not the least bit entertaining. If the rest of Air America’s lineup is this dismal, it will go down in flames.

Da Button …

IS UP!

I’m gonna have a drink and a cigar.

Like many bloggers, I actually use my blogroll. I try to read just about every site on there every day, with a couple exceptions. I also have a long list of bookmarked sites that I go to often. When I find myself regularly seeking out one of the bookmarked sites, I put it on the blogroll, mainly for my convenience.

However, I am probably naive enough to think that others just may click on sites that appear on the blogroll on the theory that if I like them, maybe they will to. I know that I click on sites from the blogrolls of sites that I enjoy, based on that reasoning.

Guided by those two thoughts, I am reluctantly removing a few sites from the blogroll. In each case, it is because the site has been inactive for a very long time, and I would prefer to use that space for active sites. Sadly, among those being eliminated is Rachel Lucas, which brings me to the next point.

If you find that your site was one of those eliminated and I see that you have fired up your blog again, I will gladly put the site back on the blogroll.

Having made some room on the list, I will be adding a couple new sites shortly, but first things first, as this requires a trip to visit Mr. Template.

Sgt. Hook has arrived in Afghanistan, and he is optimistic about being able to post with some regularity.

Stay tuned.

Check out Ghost Town. It is a compilation of photographs of the towns and villages surrounding Chernobyl, virtually all of which have been abandoned following the nuclear catastrophe in 1986. According to the woman who took the photos (“touring” on a motorcycle, armed only with a hand-held radiation meter), the area will be unsafe for the next 48,000 years.

The photographs of the abandoned kindergarten were particuliarly sad.

Via On The Third Hand.