This time about an inflight engine failure.
(link removed due to suspected malware on target site)
Author: Allegra
Born when atmospheric carbon was 316 PPM. Settled on MST country since 1997. Parent, grandparent.
Snowplows
By 6 this morning the snowplows / salt trucks had been by three times in 90 minutes. The University is open (although the Library is closed??). It looks like I’ll be wearing boots today.
It is a perfect night to stay home
Here’s why. This pic captures the dreamy quiet feeling on the campus right now, everybody hunkered down and staying put.
For a cool weather pic, check here.
I love iridescent clouds, and we get them a lot in Vancouver, especially in the colder weather at night. Then they are actually called noctilucent clouds.
Contrails aren’t technically clouds, but jet aircraft interact with the atmosphere in interesting ways.
Royal Vancouver Pornographic Society
Yes, I can has invite!!!! I will be going to one of their by invitation only events on Thursday. Strictly for research purposes, of course.
And for those of you who can’t deal with porn, herewith Crying baby and Howling dog.
Baby cries. Dog howls, most affectedly and musically. Baby shuts up to watch the dog. Dog shuts up because baby has stopped crying. Baby starts crying again. Rinse, repeat. A classic demonstration of a feedback loop.
Knock me sideways and zap me with a magnet
It is snowing
Wet, sloppy, melts-when-it-hits the ground blah snow.
Happy Monday
Academy Symphony Orchestra review
An amazing collection of talented strings and some possibly as talented but not so rehearsed woodwinds, brass, etc., played the Shostakovich Festival Overture, a chunk of Charles Wakefield Cadman’s American Suite, Peter Warlock’s Capriol Suite (the Tordion section had some pizzicato which sounded like a thousand fairies all popping their cheeks simultaneously), Vivaldi’s Concerto for Four Violins and String Orchestra in B Minor, and Georges Enesco’s Rumanian Rhapsody No 2 and No 1. The Vivaldi was played with great feeling. The thing I liked the best about the orchestra is the volume control. They could go from very loud to very soft instantly. Sidney Harth (who looked like he was staggering offstage for oxygen between pieces),conducted, and very well. It was a good concert, but not particularly memorable…. except for the tone of the strings, which was divine, and the fairies popping their cheeks thing. You would hae had tae be there.
Thanks to Katie K for manifesting the tickets.
It’s been bally ages since I posted a decent moose picture.
Or linked to one. I didn’t know there was MORE than one moose song for kids. Frankly I wasn’t heretofore aware of ANY.
Origami Bull Moose.
God awmighty, an entire PAGE of Moose Tchotchkes?
and no, I don’t want anything from that page.
Power shop
Pic is of me and Patricia at the party. Hey nautilus3, recognize that jacket??? (honk, tweet, snicker).
So, between 12 and 2 today, I:
Booked the car and ran downstairs and threw a bag of to-be-recycled clothing in it; drove to Planet Bachelor (having phoned and ascertained that Paul wasn’t there and Keith was) and hung with Keith for about 20 minutes, also unloading two books of Paul’s that ended up over here, taking back Katie’s bag and cleaned clothes and Harry Potter VI and VII AND her volume 2 Strangers in Paradise and a couple of free movie tix for Keith AND Paul’s mickey of Ron Superior which I picked up for him in Santo Domingo; then went over to Highgate to the Liquor Store and picked up Saint Ambroise Apricot (I had no idea it was still available), Stella Artois and Lion Winter; dropped off the clothes at the Value Village on Edmonds and picked up a 20% off coupon; went into the store and picked out 4 dresses and bought 3 (all very frou frou, and one is Allegra brand, so that was a giggle – I had wanted to buy it in Costco 4 years ago and here it was for 6 bucks….), then drove like the hammers for the Bay where I ran up the escalator, located a coffee maker to replace the one I broke (set it on a stove burner and turned the wrong burner dial on, quelle morone), paid for it (and some unscented laundry detergent as an impulse buy at the checkout) and drove home. I really don’t think all that in two hours is too shabby.
Last night’s party continues to resonate. They said “eat first” but there were boatloads of food, all really nice substantial appies. Katie K and I wandered around the Georgia O’Keefe exhibit – the party was at the Vancouver Art Gallery. She was a remarkable artist, and a remarkable woman, and I think I’m going to look around for a decent bio of her. I think of all the stuff I saw last night that it was her cityscapes which I found most compelling. I have been trying to think of a word for her style, but I’ll have to use two words instead of one: recklessly beautiful.
Snide note. That fecking DJ couldn’t sync a beat worth beans.
The weather today is simply glorious. I was thinking of continuing cleaning, but I think I’ll go for a walk instead.
Tonight, orchestral music at the Orpheum. Katie K keeps exposing me to Kultur, and I trot meekly behind, trying like hell to look intelligent or keep up. Here she is at the party looking glamourous.
Great party
Katie K and I had a lovely time at the party, and while we were not technically the last revellers out the door, we did just about close it. Thanks to the company providing taxi chits (!!??) we got home in decent time, too; I cleared the door at 12:21 this morning. I danced in high heels and now feel much as expected.
Last night I dreamed that I was a human motorboat, and I could zoom around these amazing crumbling islands full of nesting seabirds at about warp factor five while dolphins and other human motorboats tried to keep up with me. The worst part was not being able to see where I was going (I could only see where I’d been) but I managed not to hit anything. I suspect this has something to do with my trip to Saona Island. Happy sigh.
Yum!
busy day
Today I clean up a bit, run a couple of errands, head for the Spit and clack and ear flap with the Menopausal Posse, and then run home, change, attempt to whip my hair into submission and go to the company holiday cheer partay. Then, collapse. Tomorrow, more cleaning and laundry and then, if the fates are propitious and the winds kind, I will see daughter Katie in the evening.
Katie K and I are through 2 episodes of Deadwood.
Let’s burn books
I guess, not having read the books, the folks at the Diocese don’t know how feckin’ hilarious it is that they want to pull His Dark Materials from the shelf. Seeing as how it’s all about how the church stifles scientific enquiry and spiritual freedom…… I guess the rest of us can enjoy the i-ron-y.
Rantin’
Given that there’s lots of hot hot taserin’ action in the news these days, I thought I’d fire up the four brain cells I have left and attempt a rant on the subject.
When I was a kid growing up in Ottawa, I lived next door to the Chief of Police. I wasn’t scared of cops. I had no reason to be. The man next door was a wonderful guy who had a wonderful wife and four redheaded kids who were ‘lively and intelligent youngsters’ (full marks if you get the reference). Over the last 40 years, a number of social changes have occurred which have degraded our ability as a culture to convey moral intelligence to our children, so I no longer have the warm fuzzies about cops that I did when I was eight.
Like what kinds of societal changes? Smaller family sizes, so kids don’t get the “scarce resources and you’d feckin’ better share and your big brother will pound the shit out of you if you do x” lecture. Broken families so that more children spend less time with adults who are related to them and might have some interest in conveying subtle information like how to change oil, go fishing, keep a clean home or behave properly. The women (and some single dads) who are left are tired and whiny. Byeeootiful, a substantial number of children raised by tired and whiny people!! whoo hoo. This is NOT blame the victim, if I’d had to raise Keith and Kate on my own the three of us would all be considerably more loony than we are.
What else? Looser associations between neighbours so that adults are more likely to believe their lying little swine of children than the nosy parker next door reporting on their animal torturing activities. Kids being locked in a room with a phosphor dot stranger six hours a day instead of getting in trouble outside with pipe bombs and pick up baseball games, like Murphy intended. Unbelievable quantities of brain altering substances, some legit and some not, available before puberty for substantial portions of the school aged population, and fewer adults to hit the baloney alarm when the exposure occurs. Kids hitting puberty up to two years faster than when I was a kid. Holy crap, that makes a difference! And day in, day out, the unrelenting message of thin, rich, irresponsible, mouthy, stupid, greedy, oversexed neediness that is the openly stated point or winking subtext of every goddamned commercial and print ad and most of the content in most of the broadcasts all the time and everywhere.
I don’t think I am alone in thinking this. It isn’t just that our culture is rude AND people believe in spooks and angels, or that the moon landings didn’t happen. I’m not going to hop up and down and say that things are worse now in every respect, but it isn’t just the KIDS that have had less of a fair shake being taught moral responsibility, personal pride and self-control. Most of the cops now on the street in Canada are younger than I am. So I’m thinking there are a lot of adults running around now who are having ‘control issues’ too. Or have no feckin respect for other people.
For the cops, who grew up in this toxic bullshit along with the rest of us and are not inclined by the nature of their jobs to have any high opinion of homo sap, there are a couple of wonderful new wrinkles. Like, for instance, a substantial number of the people they get to deal with are DISEASED. And, if they get any on them…. contagious. Given a choice between massaging somebody’s skull with a nightstick and possibly getting blood on you, and tasering some poor sucker, what would YOU do? Ah, no contest.
So don’t be too surprised that cops are having a field day with the completely safe tasers (or so they would have me believe). After all, if you’re healthy, a tasering can’t permanently hurt you. It sure gives the cops a healthy laugh to watch you writhe on the ground like a worm.
Further reading:
Taser International wants to be part of the solution.
Santa wants to give all the good cops a taser.
Consumer tasers. At $1000 a pop, I’m not expecting one for Xmas.