Month: March 2007
Friday Anteater Blogging – Sloths #3
Posted on March 30, 2007 in Xenartha
The cards and letters were just rolling in about the sloth series. As you may not know, sloths, armadillos, and South American anteaters are all members of the [[Xenarthra]].
Today’s feature video shows a sloth crossing the road. Very slowly.
Who needs cats or squids when anteaters combine the best qualities of both!
A Slight Discrepancy
Posted on March 29, 2007 in Site News
Why did I receive over 3500 visitors in the last week and yet receive only a handful of comments?
TikiWiki
Posted on March 28, 2007 in Bugs
If you have experience with TikiWiki or phpWiki, please let me know.
Red Night
Posted on March 26, 2007 in Weather
Car lights revealed the low [[Cirrus_cloud|cirrus]] clouds, millimeters above the pavement. Drizzle spotted the windshields and eyes looked through these at the signs of the strip mall: Denny’s, Mervyn’s, Ralphs, and Tae Kwan Do. The shaggy [[Washingtonia]] palms broke black across the deep rouge sky. “In a few minutes it will be raining,” said the store clerk as he rushed to grab some rogue shopping carts. One hour later we’re still waiting for more than minute drops.
[tags]strip malls, weather, Southern California[/tags]
Open Thread #10
Posted on March 26, 2007 in Open Thread
Lurkers awake! It’s been nearly a year since I last did this. If you have been hiding and not commenting, please say hi. And — oldtimers, as well — tell me what you like about this blog.
I’m busy reading A Maggot, but I’ll chime in sometimes.
[tags]Open thread[/tags]
The Red Retro Chair
Posted on March 25, 2007 in Cats
The red retro chair is a contested zone in this house. I have a sign on the wall over my computer that says “If you want the best seat in this house, move the cat.” The red retro chair, blocky and slick, is the best seat and Fiona is the cat you must move.
She’s there now, all twenty pounds of her. A neighbor of ours had her baby out the other day. I mentioned that I had seen her husband carrying the little one. He was panting. “How much does she weigh now?” I asked. “Sixteen pounds.” Still lighter than our cat.
I sometimes say when a cat is kneeling on all fours that it is contemplating the Mystery of the Seventh Claw. Don’t ask what that’s all about because it is a Mystery and that’s why you don’t know what it is all about. Fiona is not contemplating. She’s curled up, sacked out, squeezed out of wakefulness. If I were to want the red retro chair for reading A Maggot (we are short on furniture), she would whimper and be slow, very slow on moving her body to the floor. I might have to push her, tip her off the edge.
We have this ongoing battle, she and I. It happens at dinner time when I want to sit in the red retro chair and consume the evening repast. I move her, begin to eat. In the course of the meal, I rise to have seconds — a trip of maybe 30 seconds — and when I come back, she is back on the cushion, licking her bum and whining because she knows that I want the seat back.
Now she sleeps in the red retro chair and I won’t be disturbing her. Instead, I am reading my book at the computer:
For an amorous encounter with the Quaker Maid, Reader, thou had’st best count thy Gold first. This is no silver Queen, despite her modest Appellation, nor no modest One, neither, despite her first appearance. Thous must know nothing pleases your true Debauchee better than to be obliged to force and such is this cunning Nymph’s Device — to blush, to flee, to cry for Shame, until at last she’s brought to Bay.*
This is what I read in Fowles. If I read this aloud while Fiona slept in the red retro chair, of what might she dream?
When Things Fall Apart
Posted on March 25, 2007 in Avoidance Frustration Rage & Annoyance
I realize the hell that many people must be going through. It gets ripped in one place, usually due to bad advice or a good intention. Then jihad begins — somewhere — and punishment is exacted, usually on one person. That person suffers the most. The air clears, the pain is not undone. People look to the victim to forgive without apologies, to say that things can be the same as they were before. But a wise victim finds him/herself in a tortured place. You cannot trust these people again because they will hurt you in the same way. They’ve made up lies, carried the war too far. Yet, they, too hurt.
The damage is so massive, you see, that no one can fix it. Even if apologies are offered, relations just can’t be restored. Not without outside help, people skilled in conflict resolution. The best we can do without it is to simply not make war. Yet incidents will happen, people will not leave it alone or tread in another’s space. And the other will not like them there because they have never heard the least suggestion that what was done to them was in error.
We’ve been taught that apologies are signs of weakness, of total capitulation.
I fucked up. And I just can’t stand the sight of the people who fucked me over.
[tags]Anger, Avoidance, Frustration, Conflict, Moods, Emotions[/tags]
Tiring
Posted on March 25, 2007 in Equality
All animals are equal but some are more equal than others.
Organizations that try to motivate spirit by telling everyone who the president is, who the past presidents are EVERY SINGLE TIME they get together in a group. It doesn’t matter if the presidents were just people who stepped forward — were never elected, etc. “Wow,” they want us to say. “He’s president. How cool is that?” Elsewhere I have seen it said “Trying to be cool is the very essence of being uncool.” Isn’t this one (call it “[[Toastmasters|Toastmasterism]]”) of the more severe examples of just that?
[tags]Equality, Respect[/tags][dels]Equality, Respect[/dels]
Desert Blues
Posted on March 23, 2007 in Weather
The sky outside has turned to the color of the blood in my veins. Clouds which I greeted have fled eastward and are doubtless causing trouble over the Midwest, giving unto Texas and the South a plague we desperately need falling on us. I enjoyed the clouds’ shoving and pushing across the alluvial plain last Sunday. Tuesday’s rain brightened my spirits until I saw that it was only what had been expected early next week.
Southern California is a desert, my friend Leah insists. No, I disagreed, but it may be becoming one.
[tags]Weather, California[/tags][dels]Weather, Southern California[/dels]
Presenting the Chevron
Posted on March 23, 2007 in Cats
I open the bedroom door and the second of the twisted sisters, Boadicea, is outside, pacing back and forth in the hall, mewing. There’s no explanation for it, so I call her over to the bed and give her a good rubdown. She follows me all over the condo. Whenever I stop she rolls on her back and presents the tabby colored chevron on her chest for scratching. The other cats are nowhere to be seen.
[tags]Cats[/tags]
Friday Anteater Blogging – Poop
Posted on March 23, 2007 in Xenartha
Corrected.
It was going to show up sooner or later. Here’s a classic segment about the Tulsa Zoo’s silky anteater tamandua. Poor fellow tries to tell Dad that he needs to go but….
Who needs cats or squids when anteaters combine the best qualities of both!
[tags]Anteaters[/tags][dels]Anteaters[/dels]
Doused by a Dry Spell
Posted on March 22, 2007 in Hiking Nature Weather
If in past seasons the hills blazed with wildflowers, this is a dim year. When we hiked down the [[Cleveland National Forest|Santiago Trail]] to a place with fossil shells last Sunday, I counted five blooms — three of them Coast Paintbrush, a four inch long branch of yellow blooms, and a single mustard flower. The trailsides were a grim brown, reminiscent of late Autumn rather than March.
On Tuesday it rained. It did not fall all over Orange County. [[Portola Hills]] seemed uniquely favored. The black splashes lingered for a few hours and took with them the promise of showers early next week.
[tags]Wildflowers, Hiking, Nature, Weather, California[/tags]
