Follow-up To Adventure
Regarding my last post, life on the road isn’t an easy one.
You can tell by my navigator’s thousand-yard stare.
Still, food\fur is plentiful, and easy to locate in the heat.
Category: junk thought
Onward To Adventure and Gamy Meat
The new plan:
I’m going to lash together a number of office chairs, re-engineer some hockey sticks, and build myself a land-raft.
Then it’s off to live the life of a modern voyageur, roaming the highways and byways, scooping up roadkill for their pelts.
I should be able to sell the furs, and any rogue hubcaps I find, to meet my needs: food, WD-40 for the casters, and maybe a tarp for the rainy season.
Modern Bear-Baiting
Did you know that bear-baiting still thrives in Pakistan?
I sure didn’t:
Abolitionist: What happens to the dogs? Has WSPA rescued any dogs?
Fakhar: The dogs are owned by very powerful landlords in Pakistan. We haven’t started any confiscation of the dogs because we have basically been concentrating on the bears. Dogs also receive injuries but their physical needs are looked after very well by these landlords. The gypsies however make the bear’s claws blunt and they remove the bears incisors and canine teeth as they can’t pluck the molars and pre molars. These teeth are crushed by a hammer which is again a very painful and unnecessary procedure. One can only imagine how little these bears can defend themselves against the dogs.
– More
Is China actually Dunder Mifflin?
This is an old piece from the New York Times, but I just came across it while digging through my fodder folder and thought it was worth another round of sharing:
AS an American journalist based in China, I knew there was a good chance that at some point I’d be detained for pursuing a story. I just never thought I’d be held hostage by a toy factory.
That’s what happened last Monday, when for nine hours I was held, along with a translator and a photographer, by the suppliers of the popular Thomas & Friends toy rail sets.
[…]
The scene was farcical. We were locked inside the factory gate, surrounded by 16 security guards and 4 or 5 factory bosses. All trucks trying to bring supplies in or out of the complex were rerouted. Inside, large crowds of factory workers in blue uniforms were gawking. A crowd had also gathered outside the gates.
The weird thing is, I can almost see this as a Chinese version of The Office, with Michael Zhū Scott desperately attempting to cover up his belief that lead in the paint gave the wood a delicious gleam.
Saturday Night's Alright (For Fighting) Redux
I’m not sure what it is about this photo that I find so striking – maybe it’s something about the way King Ghidorah is staring down the camera – but I’d love a print of it on my wall.
It’s all about the details, so it loses some of the glory when it’s shrunk – click it to view the proper image.
Mosquito
I accidentally swallowed a mosquito earlier – at first I was pretty disgusted, but after some consideration I’ve come to feel like I just took a little back for humanity.
Lunch
As a Canadian who interacts with quite a few Americans on a day to day basis, sometimes it’s very tempting to make up an imaginary food item.
“Brb, just need to go grab some lunch – delicious Troulourt*, here I come!”
If ever questioned, I’d just claim it was something with cheese and gravy on it, an explanation that generally seems to mollify our southern neighbours about every other food stuff we claim to cram into our mouths.
[*I think the ‘U’s sell it, but I have no idea how it would be pronounced.]
Saturday Night's Alright (For Fighting)
A tweet so nice,
I’m postin’ it twice
I know people are excited about UFC, but if I’m gonna watch dudes hug for a couple of hours, I’d rather just hang out at my Uncle Dennis’.
JRD Skinner
JRDSkinner
Crisp Thursday
It’s a busy day around the fabrik, although we’re all still quite abuzz that tech guru and book club gang leader, Tom Merritt, swung by to say hello on last night’s episode.
In the mean time, here’s a random twitter quote that amused me, brought to you via a bookmarklet indicated by Warren Ellis.
It is rude to leave innocuous comments on friends’ Facebook updates that could not somehow be construed as veiled insults.
Fake e-Etiquette
FakeeEtiquette
London After Midnight
London After Midnight is probably the most famous ‘lost film’, the last known copy was destroyed in a vault fire at MGM in 1967. A silent film, it starred Lon Chaney as a madman running amok in a fantastic hat.
It has such a following that a few years ago Turner Classic Movies decided to pay for a reconstruction – so they had a 45 minutes version made using nothing but the publicity stills.
It’s a great peek at what the movie would have been like, but many film buffs were still not satisfied.
Film buffs like Sid Terror:
Meanwhile, the Monster Kid waited and time passed. Every time I’d get into an old movie theater, and there were many of them, I’d give the cursory look around.
There was the now long-gone Vitaphone Theater in Saratoga California. Once a silent house, this arch-ceilinged cavern of a Quonset-shaped auditorium had made the change over to sound around 1930 or 31. Still owned by the Butler family, amazingly, up through the 1970’s they still also ran old carbon arc projectors with their lead rods that constantly had to be adjusted. At 15 years old, I learned to project and do my first reel changeovers on those relics. – more
To be fair, Sid’s quest started well before TCM ever considered their remake, and the current conclusion is both amazing and heart rending.