your daily dose of Americana

Where else but America could you find a squirrel dressed up as Lady Liberty:

Sandra Day O’Connor

Or my favorite, Saddam Hussein.

This is one versatile squirrel, as she also dresses as a U.S. soldier tasked with preparing the gallows for Saddam’s execution (causing me to wonder how many Americans believed it was the U.S. that hanged Saddam rather than the Iraqis. Perhaps the squirrel, if not the president, realized there wasn’t much daylight between American directives and supposed impartial and independent Iraqi judicial procedures.)

I suspect this is the sort of thing people will be looking at in museums 500 years from now, not the modern art hanging in galleries today.

[Sugar Bush Squirrel, via somepowers]

And, to get back to my roots, my wife found a website dedicated to Utah names. The site creators insist the names are all legit (click “What’s in a (Utah) Name?”), but some of them make me wonder.

I can see R'lene, Desereta, Xione, Brighaminie, or Najestica—those don’t seem so far fetched. Utahns don’t seem to feel bound to the same social conventions as the rest of the country. And living physically and socially isolated as Utahns did for 100 years or so, a society is bound to develop some unique cultural characteristics.

But Chinchilla Zest, Desdedididawn, Luvit, or Treasure Cocaine? Wow. Just wow.

Also, I watched the first Left Behind movie yesterday. But that’ll have to be a post for another day.