Blog Heap o'Art of Links 26 August 2011

[In the song] Cobwebs by… Loudon Wainwright III… Maynard G. Krebs… is blamed for starting the vogue of using the word 'like' as a quotative.

A renowned political cartoonist whose drawings expressed Syrians' frustrated hopes for change was grabbed after he left his studio early Thursday and beaten by masked gunmen who broke his hands and dumped him on a road outside Damascus. One of Syria's most famous artists, Ali Ferzat, 60, earned international recognition and the respect of many Arabs with stinging caricatures that infuriated dictators including Iraq's Saddam Hussein, Libya's Moammar Gadhafi and, particularly in recent months, Syria's autocratic Assad family. He lay badly bruised in a hospital bed Thursday evening with his hands swathed in bandages, a stark reminder that no Syrian remains immune to a brutal crackdown on a five-month anti-government uprising. Ferzat remembers the gunmen telling him that "this is just a warning,"