Category: Stupidities

Isn’t he cute? Our first born too. And we feel so special about him because he’s just so special.  And we decided to give him a unique name. Not a really unique name like Tyler or Crispin or Skywyn or Jake or Tanner or April or Jimeen.  Just a unique one.  Tell the truth we just don’t know the sex.

Drosophila melanogaster.  Step right up.  They’re flying by my head right now.  It’s tough.  They just don’t seem content to die off like they should.  They’re like the Imperial Japanese Air Force.  Buzz buzz.  Flying around looking to bug somebody.

Great name for a band.  Look, I just want to get drunk here.  They’re all over me.  And they bight too.  They can be as irritating as their country cousins the No-see-ums.  The country cousins pack a wallop for their minute size.  “Gdamn no-see-ums,” we used to call ’em in the woods.  These citified miniature fruit-flies though, while they bight, it’s more of an itchy/scratchy thing.  Loved that show.  Cat hates ’em.

So when you’re staring at your breakfast tomorrow morning remember why the baby’s fussy.  It’s Melanogaster.  It’s hard but time is on our side.  After a while it’s just another annoyance.  It’s September 17 and we will outlast you, Drosophila.

It’s ridiculous.  Those little green pail things with the handle the city gave you to put your vegetable peelings and stuff in?  Don’t open it.  Not good. Dark swarms of Drosophila melanogaster’ll be all over you.  It’s awful.  Ow! Get outta here!

Fruit-fly images courtesy CS Nicol

 

 

 

Vancouverluft II.  Awesomeator. New word. The entity that is continuously awesome. The awesomeator. Noun. Something awesome that has become an entity unto itself.  It’s back. The beautiful Vancouver wind. The benevolent, blustery, beneficent breeze, blissfully blowing at us the kind, air-born comments of something that is beautiful, and that we can’t control.

We’re living it and that takes up a lot of time but occasionally we emerge from our burrows amidst all our cares and notice the beauty.

And then the smoke came. Like some foreign planet.  Get out.  “Looks like Mars,” I was saying across the courtyard here on level 3 scant minutes ago.  Then our neighbour seemed to go down and I don’t know what got him.  I hope it wasn’t the smoke.

9:23 pm. We’re in downtown Fairview here and the home fires are burning strong. It’s interesting. The novelty is going strong.  If it’s like this a week from now all the smoking you haven’t done will have been negated.  And that includes tobacco, cigarettes, cigars, marijuana, hashish, beedies,  blow, oxy, junk, crack, everything. It’s gather round the campfire, kids. Let’s have a weenie roast followed by every dear child’s favourite. Marshmallows.

Let’s make it happen.  Burn down the Mission.  Light my fire.  Fire, you’re gonna burn. Burning ring of fire. Firing on all eight cylinders. You’re fired. Fire down below. Fire on the moon. All fired up. Fire if fired upon. Where there’s smoke there’s fire.  Fire away.July 6.  Afternoon.  The smoke’s died down but how do we get the lingering effects out of our hallway?  Put a fan out there and blow it away.

Marigolds courtesy CS Nicol

You can be in the wrong for years and not know it.  You can be kind of proudful that you have information others might not have and it’s always interesting when that information, unbeknownst to you, is entirely wrong.  It’s erroneous.  And you’ve been wrong.  Hopefully you don’t go into a pout or snit but take the news well because you’re a public figure and have a certain standard to uphold.  A standard you invented yourself.

I’ve spent a month thinking about this.  Two weeks.  Actually, a few days.  I’m not making a big thing out of this but when you get something wrong it’s best to fess up and it also gives you, that is me, the motivation to come over to this here blog thingy to see what’s going on, which, and I’m not going to water this down any here, has let an entire month pass, and the merriest month of May, no less, without a single entry, or “post”, or whatever’s supposed to be going on here.

I know.  Big question mark.  Again.  Let’s take a short break and see what’s out there and maybe coming our way.

It’s all right.  It’s just that guy taking pictures of the sky again.  Why does he do that?

Musical Interlude

Take a word like “concatenation”.  For years you pronounced it and spelled it, on those admittedly rare times when you might have written it down, as in never, “concantenation”.  Raise it up for the Concantenation, hiya.  We free.

Then, I was stumbling around, bumbling and burbling and bliffling for something to get on with and then States said something.  It was something about something, or it might have been something about something else.

But it caused me to say:  “A strange concantenation of events”.  And she said she’d never heard of the word before.  And I felt strong because I’m so learned.  I knew about “concantenation”.  What I didn’t know then I know now and that’s always so humbling, isn’t it?  Feel so good.

I couldn’t remember where I’d first come across the word and the phrase.  And for years, although I had the phrase right, I was spelling and pronouncing “concatenation” with that extra “n” in there before the “t”.  It’s “concatenation”, Mike.  Not that other thing.

Concatenation: The action of concatenating, or the condition or relation of being concatenated. 1. Union by chaining or linking together; concatenated condition. b. an instance of chaining or linking together. 2. Union in a series or chain, of which the things united form as it were links. 3. A concatenated series or system, an interdependent or unbroken sequence, a ‘chain’.  That’s from the good book. OED.  God bless.

Chain of events.  Then I managed to re-discover where I came across this word and phrase, and was reminded that the original discovery itself was the product of a strange concatenation of events.

It was a series of events that caused me, years ago, and I’m still a bit bewildered by this, and it’s kind of shocking, so be careful, to be reading Edward Gibbon.  Not the guy who runs the dry cleaners over on 8th, but the “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” guy.  And for reasons unknown the word and phrase stuck through the decades.

And now, today, at last, through a further strange concatenation of events, I’m sharing with the world all that’s gone on about this.  And you can see how it could go on.  And on.  Because just about everything is the result of a strange concatenation of events.  Today is the result of every day that has come before.  I’m sure of it.

Belisarius or somebody was getting his kilt dry cleaned and by a strange you know what something went amiss.  I think that was it, but I could be wrong.