Entomology Bleg, Yellow Caterpillar Category

A handful of these found in the backyard this morning.

The handheld caterpillar, April 2012

One of many local caterpillars, April 2012

One more hit ought to do it, then I'll quit while I can

Levon

Friday Funnyousness

Billy Crystal is 64. He isn't the last of the great East Coast storytelling Jewish comedians. That would be Myron Cohen, who's been gone awhile, and I have no idea who might be next in line. But he did grow up not just steeped, but marinated in that wonderfully fertile Jewish Catskills Broadway music business nightclub society that spawned the success of Cohen and the excess of, e.g., Jackie Mason. So he knows all the tropes by imitation, and he deploys them here to full force and effect, bringing it all to closure with what is not only a laugh but a lightly coded reference to all just kill me jokes.

The bear is awesome.

Yeah, I'll change yer flat tire, Merle. Don't you get your finger-picking hands all covered with erl…

Merle Haggard is 75 today. Happy Birthday, Merle. Keep on working, y'hear?

hashtag appleblossom

An audit of a Foxconn facility in China reveals serious and persistent violations of Chinese labor law at a plant in Zhenzhoug tied to the production of Apple Computer's products, products that lately have made the Cupertino company the richest in the world. Apple called for the audit in the wake of a tide of criticism of its dependence on the by-now notorious practices of the Taiwanese manufacturer. Apple CEO Tim Cook is on hand as well, taking the stern look.

Apple used Foxconn as an intermediary to extract labor from tens of thousand of Chinese workers making its enormously successful products, and those workers were worked hard by their bosses, excessively hard according to the Fair Labor Association, which conducted the investigation.

In other news, Apple Computer has announced plans to begin delivering quarterly dividends to its stockholders, beginning with a planned payout of $2.65 per share, and buying back $10 billion in stock over the coming three years, to be paid for out of the unprecedented hoard of cash ammassed by the Cupertino company, currently estimated to exceed, comfortably, 110 billion dollars, which is to say, $110 billion in cold hard cash in American money, itself the current nonpariel of monies. Apple plans to hand out $45 billion of its cash over the next three years persuing these ends, which, at the rate cash keeps accumulating at Apple, will be more than made up for, in the estimate of John Gruber at Daring Fireball. "At their current rate of generating earnings, even with these initiatives their cash war chest should grow."

He's estimating there that Apple will own significantly more that $110 billion in cash on hand in three years time.

Seems like it's bonus time for the workers who made Apple all that money. I mean, if guys who are trying to resuscitate the CDO market are getting bonuses at Goldman Sachs, shouldn't the people who, as it turns out, made Apple more money than it knows what to do with get a bonus for what they've brought about? Foxconn worked a lot of people like pack mules to fulfill orders for Apple's insanely popular line of products. Tim Cook should set up a card table at Foxconn's gate and shake the hand and pass over thousands in cash to every Apple worker who comes by, is what I'm saying.