Because it’s hot and sunny and summery outside, I give you more paradise in the Maritimes.
[flickr 7156526@N06 72157601126486141].
Archive for July, 2007
On Saturday morning I awoke just before six to the sounds of “clink clink” and “chink clunk” coming through my open window. Curious, I looked outside and saw something unusual.
Spread out all over the neighbour’s lawn was stuff, tonnes of stuff, furniture, mirrors, lamps, books, everywhere, at six in the morning. A yard sale.
I dressed, went over and met my neighbour. She introduced me to her brother who was “between lives” and using his sister’s lawn to purge a previous life, 18 years worth of a life lived in Atlanta, Georgia. Everything had to go.
Normally, I would resist the temptation, but I just happened to be starting anew myself. My old family cottage has recently been purged of its stuff to make way for a renovation.
The synchronicity couldn’t have been more perfect.
Digging through the piles of stuff in my neighbour’s yard was like conducting an archaeological dig through someone’s life. Books, trinkets and little household items tell so much about their owner.
This fellow had eclectic interests ranging from planting dwarf fruit orchards to Newt Gingrich, aeronautics, landscape painting, cooking, sailing, golf and God.
Framed pictures showed him with children who were now young adults helping out with the sale.
I picked up a couple of large nautical prints in lovely frames, model yachts with intricate rigging apparatus and little lobster boats with their own tiny buoys and wooden traps. Perfect for a cottage.
I found a fantastic piece of Georgia folk art, a wooden lighthouse, with the artist’s name displayed on the bottom. There were the gorgeous floor-model tiffany lamps - not the real thing, of course - but high in quality. Several other floor-model lamps wore shades that resembled the Sunday hats of Edwardian ladies promenading through the park.
But the piece de resistance was a two-foot tall hanging birdcage made of tiny rattan spokes with a little trap door on the side - an impressive knock-off of a Victorian bird cage. Inside were two fake parrots with real feathers, their talons clutching the spokes of the cage. Except for the eye hanging off one of the bird’s faces, those parrots looked so real.
This stuff would all find a home in my cottage. I was thrilled. My neighbour was thrilled. My neighbour’s brother was thrilled. The other yard sale shoppers were filthy.
They had come before the advertised time (but after me) to pick over the good stuff only to find me there taking away their booty.
But that’s OK. Yard sales are the ultimate free market and like the old saying goes: the early bird gets the Victorian cage and the fake parrots.
And that’s no big deal. Right?
Well, no big deal until I tell you that I’ve never seen an episode of The Simpsons before. (Well, there was that time in the 90s when I saw part of an episode in Czech and I didn’t speak Czech at the time. Long story.)
When I came out on my Simpson’s virginity during the 400th episode hoopla, Tanya Espanya was desperately worried. “I, I don’t know what to say,” she gasped, capturing the general tone of response to this confession.
Let me be clear. I’m not anti-Simpsons. I love the idea of the The Simpsons. TV needs The Simpsons. America needs The Simpsons. It’s just that I’ve just never managed to
1) live in a country where it was available on TV
2) own a TV when it was on
3) know when it was on when I did have a TV and live in a country where it was available
So, today the planets lined up and I took my eight-year old son off to the movie theatre for the historic first viewing (not on TV, funnily enough.)
And what did I think? Well, I liked it. My son liked it too. It was funny and witty and we laughed. Out loud sometimes, especially in the first 15 minutes. I can’t say I busted a gut laughing, but it was an enjoyable 90 minutes.
I must confess that I expected the quips and humour to be slightly more hard-hitting and dark. Perhaps this expectation grows from having seen South Park and Family Guy which seem more biting than The Simpsons. Perhaps this had something to do with securing the all-important PG-13 rating. I don’t know.
But it’s OK because The Simpsons is the template. Without The Simpsons blazing the trail, none of these other animated commentaries on American life could have existed.
I’m glad I’ve finally seen it. I am a Simpsons virgin no more.
So you can stop worrying Espanya.
Naomi Campbell has ghost-written a book. Now, if only I could get someone to ghost-read it for me.
Mark Lamar, British radio personality.
A generation ago middle age was anywhere between 30-45. Now, the on-line dictionaries put it somewhere between 40-65.
That’s quite a leap considering the average life expectancy hasn’t changed in that generation.If you put a literal interpretation on today’s definition of middle age, that would mean our average life expectancy would be 80-130.
So what gives? Why has middle age become a Phase that Cannot Be Called Middle Age?
And what are the new words that have sprung up to replace it? Go here for the rest of the story.
And while we’re at it, let’s junk the cap Ws in World Wide Web, and cap E in email. I’ve never understood the maniacal attachment to capital letters for all things related to the internet.
We don’t use a cap T for telephone, R for radio or railroad, cap Ps for pencil and paper and cap H in highway. These were all important communication media that changed the way we live and work and relate to one another, yet we’ve managed quite nicely with the lowercase.
Open any style guide and see them shriek the capital rule on Internet and Web. “Death to lowercase users!” they seem to be saying.
Why?
I don’t buy the proper-noun argument. Surely the internet has transcended the specific and proper and moved into the realm of the generic. These words aren’t copyrighted or branded or trademarked, so that’s no excuse either.
My theory is that the capitalization is a hangover from the early heady days when over-exuberance prompted some people to MAKE IT ALL SEEM MORE IMPORTANT BY WRITING IT IN CAPITAL LETTERS.
Let’s not be style slaves to style guides that are simply repeating internet grammar protocols of yore. Let’s grow up and challenge these unnecessary embellishments.
It’s pretentious and it stokes the forces of capital-letter inflation. After all, if everything is capitalized, then nothing stands out.
Down with capital I in internet.
BTW, the spell check on this post is lighting up the word internet. Wonder why?
Here are some images taken during a trip to majestic Prince Edward Island.
It is the land of Anne of Green Gables, but there is so much more to this island. The coastal scenery and the seafood beat the heck out of Anne, although I was loyal follower of the trouble-making red-head.
These shots were taken on the Northumberland shore of the island during a visit to the cottage of friends. The scenery and food were accompanied by much hilarity.
Hint: if you move the mouse over the top part of the pic, you should get a slider to make the slide show go faster or slower.
[flickr 7156526@N06 72157600980455760].
I’ve been meme tagged by Grammar Grrrl Beth from A Cup of Coffey to answer five random questions.
1. Who was your Tiger Beat crush? Do you still find him cute?
Tiger Beat was a teen magazine of the ’70s read by mostly pre-teen girls. My crush was Tony DeFranco who used to sing Heartbeat, It’s a Love Beat with his band The DeFranco Family which, I am assured, was not a manufactured band.
Tony is now selling high-end real estate in California. Cute? Naaaw, my tastes have evolved since ‘73, but TDF is not hard to look at either.
2. You’re the new hot voice out there, and everyone wants to play with you. Who do you pick to play in your backup band?
Guitar, Jack from White Stripes,
Base, Sting
Drums, Larry Mullins Jr, U2
Background vocals, Amy Winehouse, George Michaels, David Bowie, Sting.
Piano, Jools Holland
Clarinet, Artie Shaw (he’s dead and hasn’t played since ‘52, but I’m assuming this meme is a fantasy and we can bring him back)
3. What’s your favorite curse word? When do you use it?
I adore the words arse, arsing, arse-h***. I use these words when dealing with or talking about people who are arses. I find it an immensely satisfying word to say aloud and to describe appropriate people. I always use the word with an R as I find the word ass to be rather crude.
4. What’s your guilty pleasure TV show, the one you’re almost embarrassed to admit you watch?
Bewitched, Teletubbies, Sixties Batman and Robin shows, Old Underdog cartoons.”There’s no need to fear,Underdog is here!”
5. Which is your very favorite bauble?
My wedding rings, but not because I’m sentimental about weddings or wedding rings.
I like messing with the one-ring-forever ritual of the wedding ring.
I switch them up whenever the whim takes me. There was no ring available on the day I married because I was on a remote beach in Fiji and the closest thing available to a wedding ring was a key ring which was far too big for my finger. And let’s face it, a key ring would have looked ridiculous on my finger.
Today, I am wearing a Russian wedding ring which consists of three inter-linked bands made of white, red and yellow gold. It is not made from Polonium 210.
Tomorrow, I will come up with another five random questions and tag five more people.
Children of progressive parents admitted only on leashes
-notice on a London restaurant
This is a cautionary tale about a kid, a swimming pool and a mother who took her eye off the ball for a few seconds.
This story turned out OK, but it might not have.
And the mother still has nightmares about what might have happened that day.
Thanks to GT readers Yam, Rowan of Cheddar and Deepti who discovered the bug in the new Flickr plugin I installed last night.
They informed me that the plugin didn’t work in Explorer. I got in touch with the developer and within hours he had a workaround.
And guess what? It works. Have a look at the post below this one and let me know if there are any problems.
UPDATE: We may have identified a bug in this plugin. It doesn’t seem to work in Explorer. Working on the problem. Try it in Firefox.
Some of the original GT lurkers might recall one or two of these shots from many moons ago on the old Blogspot. I’m giving them a test run here to try out my new Flickr plugin for Wordpress.
Tagbagger’s been using this type of Flickr facility for ages to display his excellent graffiti shots, but I’ve only just worked it out. The plug in is fairly easy to use once you get the codes figured out.
The pictures came about as I drove through the countryside early one morning and noticed a fog bank settled a valley. I turned off to get a shot, and as I traipsed through the field, I noticed the grass was draped in webs, hundreds of them, each encrusted with tiny droplets of dew. They glistened in the morning sunshine and left you with the impression that a bandit had dumped a stolen stash of fine jewelry over the side of the road while being chased by the cops.
It was my lucky find.
[flickr 7156526@N06 72157600886610808].
Call me a prickly pedant, but will someone please tell CBC radio news announcers that the correct pronunciation for President of Russia is vluh-DEE-meer POO-tin, that’s Vladimir Putin WITH the T. Some have taken to calling the man Pooooo-n, dropping the T altogether.
You may say Pe-shaw - what’s in a T?
Well, a lot when you’re a radio broadcaster. Correct pronunciation is a hallmark of good broadcasting. Pooooo-n is lazy elocution and this is inexcusable for a national radio broadcaster.
BBC satirists have lambasted Geo. Bush mercilessly for this lazy glottal stoppage. Would Canadians like it if Russian national broadcasters called our Prime Minister Stephen Haper? Actually, most broadcasters outside of Canada don’t know who Stephen Harper is or how his name is pronounced.
It’s embarrassing to hear our national public broadcaster going soft on pronunciation.
And it’s worth noting that not all CBC broadcasters are guilty of this T-dropping, ergo the North American accent argument can’t be invoked in this case.
What with Ozzy Osborne’s first wife’s first cousin visiting, the tall ships sailing in and out of port, the White Stripes being in town, the jazz festival happening, Beauty and the Beast on stage, my Photoshop studies ongoing and that strange heat-giving yellow orb in the sky - I believe the ancients called it the sun? - this typist has been falling down on the job.
I realize that my posting has become sporadic.
But we dwellers of this foggy, rain-drenched land are thrown for a loop when we are confronted by heat and sunshine at this time of year.
And when it happens we feel compelled to rush outside and dance around in praise of the great yellow orb. Please forgive me.
Of course this blog and its readers are the most important thing. Without it and you, there would be no me.
They are predicting rain in the next few days so my postings should pick up.
I was horrified to find the other week that my second son is taking drugs - my very best ones too.
Bob Monkhouse, British Comedian.