Demise

Some charming snaps of snazzy penmanship in response to demise of a shop, served with an eviction and repossession notice.

Bloomin Blath

Is this one of

the reasons

stv didn’t pass?

Were people distracted by their blooms?

What is it going to take to engage the electorate and get them out to vote?

They seem to come out for hockey matches. Perhaps retired hockey players would ignite a successful campaign or lookalikes even.  It’s so disappointing this opportunity has been lost for a fairer system, one where your vote can actually make a difference.

Sri Lanka Protest: Grid/cross

Here are some pictures I took at a recent protest outside the library against the barbaric slaughter of the Tamils in Sri Lanka. The way the protest banners had this grid or cross shape on the back of them particularly drew my attention. It was a rainy day. I admired the young men and women handing out information via a BBC news story printed up. There was no obvious media presence. The chants were energised but there was a real sense there was no one to listen to them and no vessel through which they’d be heard.

Somnolence

It usually takes an uncanny weather story to lift me from my bloggled somnolence.

This is the tale from today’s Graun about a gal nun that took to a cave for a number of years, hermit solidudette.

Here’s the para that sparked me up

I was ready to do a long retreat - three years in complete solitude.
Once we had a huge blizzard that raged for seven days and nights,
the snow covered the door and window and the whole cave
was in complete blackness. I thought: "This is it."
Looking back, I'm amazed I wasn't claustrophobic.
I felt perfectly calm and resigned.
Then I heard a voice say, "Shovel out."
I used a saucepan lid and dug a tunnel out.
It took an hour or two and I did it three times
but survived to tell the tale.

Liberté

Well that was a very long episode of freethinking, so free I have not been thinking. What I have been doing is watching these short snips of the bold Monsieur Maigret and enjoy the age old ding-a-ling telephone and epic long barge in one of them … couldn’t tell if it was the boardwalk or a boat during that long, long initial shot.

There was some kind of a series “Sur la piste avec Maigret” I think that was how I originally stumbled upon them.

Freethinking Festival 2008

It’s that time freethinking time again:

BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking Festival is back in Liverpool from 31 Oct to 2 Nov 2008, with conversation, film, performance, drama and debate about the ideas that are changing the world.

Better online access this year, so no need to hug the speakers close with an eye on the clock — it’s archived here

Reformation

Here’s something to think about without ever running.

An excellent piece from The Believer, by Paul Collins about spelling reform

I’ve plenty more to say on this, but had to put it up right now because it’s a tad like chocolate mousse: should I stay back and reflect on the way the light falls on it, or take a gummy nip out of it…

Disclaimer: I could be nominated as a class A member of Tufty The Squirrel’s Woeful Spellers Club. If only Tufty had given up his obsessive interest in road safety. Spelling trauma was much more widespread in the 1970’s.

NPR piece here

Further thoughts on thinking about what Mr Murakami thought about when he was running, now that I have stopped running

Mr Murakami did not mention the hallucinations likely caused by pneumo deprivation. Like for example the other day before I had officially stopped running and was still running I saw Joe Biden sitting on a park bench wearing a pressed white shirt.  Joe Biden remained on the bench deep in thought on my second lap and I did not do a third lap so for all I know he’s still sitting there.

At the time he was rumoured to be in debate camp, but my eyes saw him on a park bench in a different country. And he was very pensive, which is vice presidential unlike the other peut etre VP twit who appears to be on non stop audition for a barn dance and might form some coherent sentences if she actually sat down on a bench.

Anyway I digress.

But if, after my paltry efforts at the sport of running, I induce visions of Biden; imagine the visions Mr Murakami has had, and omitted to tell us about. By mile 58 he surely should have been getting a peek at T-Rex (as in the dino, not the band), JFK (since oxygen deprived hallucinations appear to have a political theme). This is likely the truth behind Nessie the Loch Ness Monster. She’s real alright, but she’s international. A weekly acquaintance of anyone pacing about, torturing the achilles.

Thinking about what Mr Murakami thought about when he was running

Mr Murakami was right in his descriptions of running. Initially I was perfectly satisfied to let him do the running, but then after he passed all those dead dogs in Greece and the unjust cruelty of that marathon where you’ve to hit mile 38 out of a total 65 mile course by a certain time or they hoof you from the race… I needed to raise out of the armchair and test drive what he reports.

Firstly he omits to mention, probably because he’s been at it 26 years and no longer notices, the perpetual build up of NASA style pressure and pain round the shins and ankles after running about five paces. Pressure only relieved by stopping and yowling. This never ceases even after 21 whole days of running.

Another omission is the ankle bending motion required to dodge the ample supply of dog shite (are there no dogs in Japan?) Eyes must remain down or shoes and nasals will suffer.

Eventually when you can alight your gaze for a few seconds, you do discover hark indeed, he’s right the same faces pass each day and nod or avoid eye contact…there’s the man in the green jacket who cycles up that hill every day (at a much swifter pace than I manage going down it) and then a few days more of ‘hark, there’s that man in the green coat before a closer squint …and  er bloody hell I actually know that man in the green coat and better duck so he does not bear witness to me in this much reduced condition.

He also did not mention the runner’s fury at objects blocking their way. Usually these objects happen to be baseball players, who seem to adopt urban sprawl as their policy for temporarily inhabiting outdoor spaces in pursuit of raising their bats. Pace, pace, pace, pant, chest pain, pant, cue blurring of vision, what the bleep is that slung across the path…tents, bicycles, extended family, cooler, and finally, but surely with single intent of wiping out approaching, arthritic runner they come complete with waist high dangling cigarettes designed to singe you and your polyester shorts as you pass them and their sprawling (and unnecessary) accoutrements. And this was on a rainy day. I think they bring the entire block of flats when the sun comes out.

Treasure

Crikey, think I just alighted upon my true calling….though Environment Canada are so conservative in their assessments. We’ll be deluged with epic rain and their assessment will read “light drizzle”.

http://www.amateurradio.ca/

CANWARN is the Canadian Weather Amateur Radio Network.  These are amateurs supporting Environment Canada with eyeball reports of severe weather as it passes through their area.  Environment Canada can watch storms coming through on radar and satellite imagery, but they cannot see what is happening UNDER the clouds. 

A note of caution before readers get to ecstatic and race off to sign up:

 

CANWARN members are not storm chasers.  Rather than chasing the weather, we wait for the weather to come to us! 

I am co-operating fully with the later instruction, merely keep my close encounters to ruminating on the radars of places I’ve never been. I wish this font would be similarly co-operative.

Retreat

An interview with Philip Roth on The Observer, not linked to here for the simple reason I cannot understand why we (or the medja in our apparent interest and from whom I should state I do earn the odd muffin, incredibly minimal quantity of muffins but muffineen none the less) keep hunting these people who don’t want to be interviewed down. Leave him and those like him alone. We don’t need these pilgrimages to the foot of his remote country lane to learn life busting facts such as the fact his legs have grown incredibly skinny. God help us. Nor one hopes by age 75 should he give a toss that Hitchens (whose miraculous qualification in this instance is he’s lived as a reader through every phase of Roth’s writing …so likely has the average man doling out the shoes at the local bowling alley) declares him fouling his nest (it’s like an uninvited member of the Health Board popping in to comment on the dusting). And the obligatory hasty summing up of a writer’s work, inbetween descriptions of how his brow is furrowed and he doesn’t want to answer questions this afternoon puzzle me as to their purpose.  Why are we going to writers, as though they have any more answers than anyone else? Especially when they’re hiding away among the apple trees, lusting after a bit of peace. Surely we should keep our dealings to what is on the page, rather than the mantlepiece.

Anne Enright had a great piece recently (in Guardian land) describing the perils and viciousness of public questioning. I’m beginning to think we feel writers may have some extra organ we don’t know about that endless questioning may reveal. 

There are people more suited to this boiling to the bones for the last dregs of their information for example and it is a prized topic of mine… weather forecasters. I’d like to see the folks grilled who did a impressive job of predicting the strength of those recent hurricanes who sign the National Hurricane Centre bulletins with only their surnames … or the neurologists could explain why those bright lights and coloured packets in shops make us dizzy? Or experts in the ear canal? Audiologists have minutae on ears to spare. Plus there’s a great deal to know about bees based on a brief exchange with a bee expert.

The Puffin when asked this week for a school assignment who he’d most like to meet declared the person who invented air conditioning. So there’s another niche that needs attending to.

I know why’d I read it? (Mainly because it stated he was writing his last book..and I had to figure out how a person could know such a thing. It did not shed any light) Why do I have links here to writers gabbing? Well it’s a recent insurrection and this piece provoked particular perhaps once off grumpydom. Why do I write about writers? Cue stubbing of inconsistent, hypocritical toe. 

Here’s another curious beam: Neon sign flashing yes above this monitor.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google

The weather in tennis

For some this essay may be about tennis, for others childhood, for me it was all about the weather. RIP. Mr W.

For those who knew him, the thought of his suffering (or others similiar suffering) must be hard to bear.

Rumbles

B.C. coast shaken by powerful earthquake so the headline last Thursday read… A 5.8 earthquake that shook the ocean floor.

I had to wonder how it could be described as powerful if no one except the marine life felt it. Followed by affront… no mention of it on google alerts earthquakes. The stories that landed that day included nothing about our powerful one. I had to find out about it from the CBC. What’s the point in Google alerts if they don’t alert you. Tho’ I think an earthquake tends to assert itself …

It got me thinking about earthquake kits and necessary inclusions: good chocolate, strong scotch. No point in having teabags if there’s no kettle. I pondered it further what exactly is edible with no heat nor water? Crackers, canned fish, cold beans. All most unappetising in the event of catastrophe.

Have to recommend the MEC Wound Repair Kit which I treated myself to for a xmas present, mostly because it had detailed instructions on how to repair a wound.  Then not long afterwards I found a sling on sale. The Puffin unpacked it and now it will need to be retrieved from one of his teddy bears in the event of a rumble.

Always beneficial to be in calamity mode at least every three weeks.

Here are some charts to get you hyperventilating:

Our powerful one did make the US list of most powerful earthquakes in the world in the past week.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/quakes_big.php

They have an earthquake notification service you can subscribe to.

Check out the epic number of quakes that have happened on the West Coast since Aug 29th. They’re more frequent than the bus service.

http://earthquakescanada.nrcan.gc.ca/recent_eq/maps/index_e.php

And finally preparez vous .. though I think the salt and pepper suggestion is a bit excessive. Why would you fuss about not having salt for your crackers, if your entire ceiling has caved in and you are sitting in a hole.

Hearts, Lungs and Minds: experimental radio documentary

In the category of groovy ideas that have nothing to do with the weather ..came across this interesting piece…hurry though you’ve only 7 days to hear it.

An experimental documentary by sound artist John Wynne, who spent a year as artist-in-residence with photographer Tim Wainwright at Harefield Hospital, one of the world’s leading centres for heart and lung transplants.

Using recordings of patients, the devices some of them were attached to, and the hospital itself, the piece weaves together intensely personal narratives with the sounds of the hospital environment, exploring the experiences of transplant patients and the important issues raised by this invasive, last-option medical procedure.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/betweentheears/pip/oe1qu/

 

Flourish

Prepare for flurry of weather centric posts …

In a round up of weather related worrying and reading I came across this article headlined Expert: Scientific reasons behind year’s weather. The second paragraph read

At least one Iowa City resident said she thinks the weather in Iowa this year, along with the seemingly apocalyptic flurry of earthquakes, deadly tornados and other natural disasters around the globe might be a sign from above.

“I think the end is near,” Linda Lewis said Friday.

I should point out the Mrs Lewis is not the expert in the article, but I was comforted to see another weather wonderer who relies on absolutely no science for her wondering.  I’ve questioned whether it’s resolvable being entirely illiterate in science and concurrently obsessed with the weather.

I’ve muttered my way through some hardware shop discussions with perplexed employees as I complain about the selection of barometers they stock, whilst not being entirely clear what barometers actually do. I’ll ask do they measure air pressure without really having a clue what the purpose of measuring air pressure is, but since it matters to weather people, so it too  matters abstractly to me.