We Saw a Chicken …

Category: goatee-stroking musing, or something

  • 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.

  • urpy

    I have gastric flu, and it’s a pain. This is my first barf episode in about 12 years. Basically, my body’s gone on autopilot, hitting me with D&V whenever is feels like it. It’s not pretty.

  • National Convenience Store Day

    So, did you US folks celebrate National Convenience Store Day today by grabbing a slurpee and a preserved meat treat? (We celebrate it on 7 November here.)

    Sadly, and rather worryingly, I’m not the only person to think of this.

  • So long and fare thee well

    The Royal Abingdon Renaissance Faire (aka the Ontario RenFest) is no more.

  • it’s over

    Even now, the town of my birth is considering giving Zidane freedom of the city.

  • 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
    Google Earth display of all of Toronto's public libraries

    You can thank MapSource for the bloated GPX file. It quadrupled in size when I changed the symbols to look like buildings.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • fame and fortune with the Billboard Battalion

    Hey, that’s me in there: Eye – The De-signer Guys – 06.29.06

  • mark’s doodle, July 2001

    Here is a drawing of a farting elephant, made by Mark Taylor, formerly of Collins Dictionaries.

    farting elephant, by mark

  • a man of the island

    “I’m not worldly. I’m barely islandly.”
    — Peter Stampfel
    (in have_moicy, 31 Oct 2005)

  • try conderoga

    Yep, another one about pencils. I do like the Dixon Tri-Conderoga, but I don’t think I could quite gush about it as much as Pencil Revolution did. It’s a nice writer, but the first one I tried was a bit gristly for sharpening with a knife. They do smell good. There’s a freshly sharpened one nearby, and it’s doing an excellent “walk through cedar woods” impression.
    Just as well the six pack comes with a sharpener. Tri-Conderogas don’t fit a regular one.

  • didn’t make it

    One of the little guys didn’t make it. There’s a sad little grey fuzzy corpse in the back yard, already pulsing with disco rice and greenbottles.

  • aah! the world is ending!

    Telus Teleconferencing have replaced their awful, awful, so awful it’s good wait muzak with popular tunes!

  • General Tso’s Beef

    It’s a little known fact that General Tso’s Chicken does not celebrate Zuo Zongtang‘s liking for eating chicken. Instead, it commemorates his pet chicken (whom he named Maude) who travelled everywhere with him in a silk-lined portable coop of fine rosewood.

  • what the tortoise taught us

    Just finished Timothy; or, Notes of an Abject Reptile, the fictional thoughts of Gilbert White‘s pet tortoise. Verlyn Klinkenborg has really captured the pace of the tortoise’s life.

    The tortoise/taught us rhyme doesn’t work if you’re Scottish; we pronounce it tor-toys, not taw-TUSS. Lewis Carroll didn’t think beyond the RP.

    In memory of Timothy, I’ve geotagged this post with the location of a bridge in a nearby ravine, near which a little turtle used to snooze in the sun.

  • Happy Danish Sockets

    Am I losing it, or do Danish power sockets look like smileys?

    Two happy people:

    happy danish sockets 1

    Happy person with a chef’s hat (isometric view):

    happy danish sockets 2

    Do these remind you of anything?

  • Danish Modern in Ringkøbing

    I’m currently checked into a hotel which reeks of 70s Danish modern — blonde wood, bare brick, smoked glass surfaces — and, like many places in Denmark, cigarette smoke. Being in the presence of an authentic Beocom phone makes up for it though:

    Beocom Phone

    Also, there’s a cute little wind farm outside; a few Vestas V27s (or smaller) on lattice towers at 56° 7′ 22.11″ N, 8° 13′ 48.94″ E:
    Little wind farm near Ringkøbing, Denmark

  • so it is true!

    First-class airport lounges really do have free beer taps and open spirits gantries. It’s quite the opposite of the little shed that the Midwestern flights depart YYZ from.

  • a sneaking respect for convolvulus

    Our front garden seems to be mostly convolvulus; that sneaky bindweed that trails white or pink trumpet-shaped flowers. It grows so fast, I’m wondering if you could harvest it for biomass energy.

    I really dislike gardening, except for growing sunflowers. There are a bunch coming up quite well. I wonder if anyone else would like to use the rest of the garden, or suggest things to do with it?