I was busy making Möbius strips out of till roll, when I became aware of a little face watching me at the window. A very damp raccoon had one paw up on the window sill, and was looking at me as if to ask, “What are you doing making single-sided paper figures on a night like this?”
Category: goatee-stroking musing, or something
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damp bandit
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no, it just isn’t
Finding a source of “Unlimited free energy” would be the most unimaginably heinous crime possible against humanity. For it would inevitably turn the planet into a cinder. Hastening an isoentropic heat death. If you find a free energy source, you damn well better find a new free energy sink as well. Even then, the relative flux rates will still nail you.
— Don Lancaster, How to Bash Pseudoscience.
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Goodbye, childhood
Goodbye:
- headache glue cracking from finger tips
- badly-painted pilot with obvious thumb-prints
- squint and/or torn decals
- undercarriage installed backwards, if at all
- spilled tin of Humbrol enamel
- leftover sprue rattling in cardboard box with an unidentified piece still attached
- curious v-shaped stand that never quite stood level
- hung squintly from bedroom light by white thread until dusty wing missing from too many runins with parental heads
- taken down for final flight whirled round head on string until dashed against clothespole or arcing up up into neighbour’s fir tree (it’s still there today)
- when older, packed with cotton balls nicked from sister, doused with turps, crashed flaming kamikaze onto the compost heap (sorry dad, your onions never did well on paint thinner and burnt plastic)
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east coast, but further west
Strange to think that I’m on the east coast, but actually further west than home in Toronto. That whole curving away to the Gulf of Mexico thing will get you if you’re not careful.
The strange thing is, if you take my current longitude, and the latitude of our house, you get a point near Rte 16 near Brussels, ON that I’ve been through on the way back from the wind farm. That’s like, y’know, stuff, and some like other stuff too, whoah!
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furthest south
I am in Orlando for work, which is probably the furthest south I’ve ever been. Even southern Japan was further north than this.
There are good lizards here.
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civil twilight and the inexorable creep
Noticed that this morning was the first time that the street lights were on when I got up. Yes, those nights are drawing in.
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people are stupid
There’s going to be some ranting here, so I advise folks to look at this nice picture of a monarch butterfly I took at Bluffer’s Park today, and move along:
In the park there was a gull that wasn’t moving like the others. I got close to it, and discovered there was a large fishing lure lodged through its beak. I had no way of helping it, and a nearby parks crew couldn’t do anything either. It could fly, just, but the big lure slowed it down, and the trailing fishing line mad it stumble.
I know gulls are often seen as nuisance birds, but no animal deserved
this fate. There’s no fishing and no kite flying in this park because there are so many birds. I’m angry that someone could be so thoughtless.There’s a picture below the fold. You probably don’t want to see it.
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when chitin isn’t enough
An interesting beetle, crushed by the wheel of a TTC bus.
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about the only place
The pier is about the only place in Goderich that you can’t see a “Go Kati Go!” sign.
While I write this, I am being observed by a young gull. A phalarope bobs around the breakwater rocks.
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free food from Dexit
Though I still hate Dexit, I have found a place to use the remaining balance — the Pizza Pizza at the corner of Vic Park and Sheppard. Yes, their pizza is still like damp cardboard, but they have passable salads.
They still need to work on the reliability of their terminals, and training staff. The other day they said my debit was authorised, when clearly nothing had come off the tag. They wouldn’t take the cash I offered (their screen showed a green thing), so yay Dexit, free food!
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the end of poverty in your coffee cup?
I’m not sure what to make of EWB‘s current campaign, which features a future newspaper headline G8 Leaders Declare End of Extreme Poverty. It links to playyourpart.ca, which seems to say that we can end world poverty just by buying fair-trade goods?
I know there’s a lot wrong with the coffee industry (Free Trade Coffee: You Grind The Beans, We Grind The Peasants! Enjoy the smooth trickle-down flavour, etc) but it’s a simplistic argument. What can the extremely poor sell to us?
I don’t know what to think.
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So long and fare thee well
The Royal Abingdon Renaissance Faire (aka the Ontario RenFest) is no more.
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it’s over
Even now, the town of my birth is considering giving Zidane freedom of the city.
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Here do books lurk
Catherine has a project involving Toronto’s libraries, and so I, for no particularly good reason, compiled a geocoded list of the Toronto Public Library system: libraries.gpx
You can thank MapSource for the bloated GPX file. It quadrupled in size when I changed the symbols to look like buildings.
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mmm, mistaan
Ritesh & Abhay introduced us to a great Indian restaurant — Mistaan, at 460 McNicoll. It’s mostly a Bengali sweet shop, but has a food counter. The chicken saag I had was great. We’ll be back.
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Married To The Sea: a daily comic.
Married To The Sea reminds me of What a Life!, only like not written in 1911 or something.
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fame and fortune with the Billboard Battalion
Hey, that’s me in there: Eye – The De-signer Guys – 06.29.06
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mark’s doodle, July 2001
Here is a drawing of a farting elephant, made by Mark Taylor, formerly of Collins Dictionaries.
