Picspam, chronal locus edition

Yesterday was the delightful reynardine's birfday. Tomorrow is not only Kansas Day, but also the fantastic endersgame3's birfday. Today is not only the recently-dormant darksidebluezz's birfday, not only the anniversary of the Challenger disaster, but also the fiftieth anniversary of the patent of the Lego brick. January is the new October, it seems.

To celebrate, a more robust offering than usual. Saddle up, kids. ( 49 pics below.... )

From the I-swear-I'm-not-making-this-up department

I have to post this, even though you've probably already seen/heard it, because I want to prove to myself and those I already told that I'm not insane hallucinating.

George W. Bush is famous for his attachment to a painting which he acquired after becoming a “born-again Christian.” It’s by W.H.D. Koerner and is entitled A Charge to Keep. Bush was so taken by it, he took the painting’s name for his own official autobiography....

...[Bush] came to believe that the picture depicted the circuit-riders who spread Methodism across the Alleghenies in the nineteenth century. In other words, the cowboy who looked like Bush was a missionary of his own denomination.

Only that is not the title, message, or meaning of the painting. The artist, W.H.D. Koerner, executed it to illustrate a Western short story entitled “The Slipper Tongue,” published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1916. The story is about a smooth-talking horse thief who is caught, and then escapes a lynch mob in the Sand Hills of Nebraska. The illustration depicts the thief fleeing his captors. In the magazine, the illustration bears the caption: “Had His Start Been Fifteen Minutes Longer He Would Not Have Been Caught.”

Also, I must embed the term "Tolstoy Syndrome" into my personal lexicon.

And why is Hillary only talking to Brian Williams now?