Quite a few moons ago (in 2013) I got a Canon PowerShot SX50 HS camera. It has a 50X optical zoom lens with Image Stabilizer. Some of the first photos I took were of the moon, of course! The montage above are just a few of the most interesting ones. (I have not enhanced the colours.)
The next two photos have been enhanced with various filters.
If you don’t have a camera with a zoom lens, you might want to look closer to home for ‘cosmic beauty’.
How to justify the (sort of) destructive craft of Book Folding:
There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.
– Charles Dickens –
I get most of the books that I fold from the used book section of our recycle depot. A self-congratulatory publication by a former leader of Canada’s Green Party was an excellent find – the paper was high quality… the same can often be said for self-help books.
The book above was a complicated project. It used 98 leaves of the book. The pages had to be measured carefully and folded in a very strict order. The Daisies are the ‘fringe flowers’ that I used in Folding the Letter M.
This book, a spruce tree, was a lot easier!
Dinosaurs didn’t read. Now they are extinct. Coincidence?
– Author Unknown –
This book was supposed to be a wine glass. When it was done it looked more like a pudding bowl. I found instructions for making Roses with book pages, added some leaves that I cut out with finely serrated pinking shears and vois là – I had turned the pudding bowl into a rose bowl.
Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.
― Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx –
My other folded books:
May your life be full of both Thanks and Giving!
I’d like to thank Ray at Mitigating Chaos for posting this ‘traditional’ American Thanksgiving video on his blog. I’d never seen it before (maybe because I am Canadian…) but I enjoyed the story so much that I wanted to share it with others.
The song/story is folk singer Arlo Guthrie’s mostly true recollection of events that began at Alice’s Restaurant in 1965.
‘Alice’s Restaurant Massacree’ was originally released in 1967. It is only a bit about Thanksgiving, Alice, or her restaurant. It’s more about the favor they did for Alice – driving her trash out to the dump, only to find that the dump was closed for Thanksgiving.
We’d never heard of a dump closed on Thanksgiving before, and with tears in our eyes, we drove off into the sunset lookin’ for another place to put the garbage.
We didn’t find one till we came to a side road, and off the side of the side road was another fifteen-foot cliff, and at the bottom of the cliff was another pile of garbage. And we decided that one big pile was better than two little piles, and rather than bring that one up, we decided to throw ours down…
You will have to watch the whole video to see how trash led to an arrest which led to… well, just watch it!
Andrew Cotter began his career at Scot FM in Edinburgh before moving into sports commentary for BBC radio and TV. When sporting events were cancelled due to Covid-19 he began posting videos of his labradors, Olive, eight, and Mabel, four, on Twitter and YouTube.
Andrew Cotter narrates the nightly walk of the fairy penguins of Victoria’s Phillip Island as a high-stakes, long-distance race.
It is written in the book of ‘Internet’ that paper products were first used to do ‘clean ups in aisle one and two’ in the mid 1800’s. One option were sheets of manila hemp paper infused with aloe vera. Another option were the pages of the first widely circulated catalogs from Sears Roebuck. By the late 1800’s, paper was being rolled onto cardboard tubes.
From that day forward, people who had nothing more urgent to discuss, would debate how toilet paper should be hung. Some would advocate the forward (over) hang method, suggesting that might stop the paper from clinging to the wall.
The backward (under) hang proponents would point out that the family cat was less likely to unravel the roll if it was clinging to the wall…
Friendly debate continues to this day, though it would seem that the over hang method is the preferred one. Manufacturer Georgia-Pacific conducted a survey in 1993. 73% of those polled preferred the forward hang. In 2010, the Cottonellle Roll Poll attracted half a million votes – 72% chose the ‘over’ method.
And so it went until 2020 when the world went mad and people started buying up toilet paper. There may in fact now be a few homes with enough stockpiled toilet paper to last them for a very long time, as described in this joke that circulated late that year: “It was a quiet Monday morning in September 2053, when John awoke with a need to go to the bathroom. To John this wasn’t just any ordinary day! This was the day he would open the last package of toilet paper his parents bought in the year 2020.”
Also in 2020 – Stock Market Report
Helium was up, feathers were down. Paper was stationary.
Fluorescent tubing was dimmed in light trading. Knives were up sharply. Pencils lost a few points.
Hiking equipment was trailing. Elevators rose, while escalators continued their slow decline. Weights were up in heavy trading.
Mining equipment hit rock bottom. Diapers remained unchanged.
The market for raisins dried up. Balloon prices were inflated.
And toilet paper touched a new bottom.
What’s a mathematician’s favorite type of toilet paper?
Multiply.
What do you call someone who goes from one store to another looking for toilet paper?
Bounty hunter.
Since this might be my last post ever about toilet paper, I expect you want to share your thoughts on these important questions:
Does your toilet paper hang over or under?
Are you the empty roll change agent in your house?
Do you have an interesting roll holder?
Where do you keep extra rolls of toilet paper?
Your preferred vernacular – lavatory, throne, loo, WC (water closet), john, latrine, comfort room?
How many books or magazines do you have in that room?
My ‘Rona Virus’ Toilet Paper Posts, none of which went viral:
Will Trade Grapefruit for Toilet Paper
The English Department at San Jose State University has sponsored the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest since 1982. It is a literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence for the worst possible novel. The following submissions are the ones I liked best from the years 2006-2007 and 2021.
A major city’s new community policing guidelines have struck a notable compromise: police will first attempt to defuse all conflict situations by singing, “Stop, in the Name of Love,” but the public should know that holding palms out like The Supremes is optional, as is “before you break my heart!”
– Kevin Kinzer, Spokane, WA –
As the dawn begin to break, Debby and Robert, their arms tightly wrapped around each other, watched in awe as the sky turned a brilliant pinkish red as the sun’s rays inched their way down the slopes of the craggy peaks of the Rocky Mountains, but this was Canada so the rays were centimetering their way down the slopes.
– Daniel Leyde, Shoreline, WA –
Even though Bambi the deer grew up to become a sleek and powerful 10-point buck, the other deer frequently chided him about his name, which was a perfectly fine name for a cocktail waitress but not so much for a male deer.
– Greg Homer, San Vito, Costa Rica –
Hiram had been a three-toed dragon, well on his way to a promotion to Imperial five-toed dragon, when he accidentally choked on the pink chiffon scarf of Princess Chloe’s hat, and his coughing set the new oaken parapet, on the old stone bulwark, ablaze, thereby earning a demotion to Troll 3 — now his only responsibility was to keep billy goats off the bridge.
– Michael L. VanBlaricum, Santa Barbara, CA –
Lady Guinevere heard it distinctly, a sharp slap, as if a gauntlet had been thrown, and yet it was hardly plausible that she, perched delicately on the back of her cantering steed, should be challenged to ride faster, since protocol determined that Arthur should ride in front, then she, then Lancelot, for that was the order prescribed by Merlin, ever since he invented the carousel.
– Celine Shinbutsu, Hino City, Tokyo, Japan –
Post-game cake, long a clubhouse tradition for the Mudville Nine, was taken off the menu when new manager Sperb Farquhar made it clear that everybody, including the team’s sluggers, would be called on to sacrifice bundt.
– David Laatsch, Baton Rouge, LA –
She clung to the memory of their love like those tiny bits of used tissues he always left in his pockets, which mostly ended up in the dryer lint basket although enough of them welded themselves to her favorite navy blue, polar fleece pullover, rendering it as permanently flawed and unappealing as his name tattooed on her butt.
– Pamela Patchet Hamilton, Beaconsfield, Quebec, Canada –
Stanley frowned, his brow wrinkled like the furrows of a newly ploughed field in the far reaches of East Anglia, England’s prairie, when the mighty Massey Ferguson has just completed its traverse of God’s good soil in the heat haze of a late August afternoon, and wondered for the umpteenth time where on earth he had left his reading glasses.
– Pamela Hibbert, Crowthorne, Berkshire, England –
The droppings of the migrating Canada geese just missed the outdoor revelers at the inaugural Asian math puzzle competition, marking the first time that dung flew over the Sudoku Fest.
– Kevin P. Craver, Lakewood, IL –
The easy and comforting roll of the saddle was second nature to Luke, and as he gazed off into the distant setting sun, he wondered whether he had enough change for one more ride at the supermarket before he had to return to the home.
– Glenn Lawrie, Chungnam, South Korea –
The nervous and untried exotic dancer seemed to cling protectively to her brass pole like the edge of a roll of plastic wrap when you are looking for the beginning of the roll and it seems like it’s healed up or melted into the rest of the wrap until finally you just give up and use foil or wax paper instead.
– Dwight Jenkins, Sun City, CA –
The tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife, not even a sharp knife, but a dull one from that set of cheap knives you received as a wedding gift in a faux wooden block; the one you told yourself you’d replace, but in the end, forgot about because your husband ran off with another man, that kind of knife.
– Lisa Lindquist, Jackson, MI –
With one bound she was at the bookcase reaching for the heaviest book she could find to halt her attacker, a thesaurus of indeterminate, inconclusive, or unstipulated weight, ponderosity, or heftiness, with which she intended to pummel, lapidate or belabor her assailant’s skull, cranium or brainpan.
– Stu Duval, Auckland, New Zealand –
We are back on Mountain Standard Time again. I’m slowly adjusting to the hour difference but sadly, the sunrise isn’t. It insists on colouring the clouds at about 7:16 AM instead of 8:16 AM. It will keep up this sloppy attempt at adjusting until about mid December when it will be get back on track for putting on a show at the same time I am alert and ready to watch it.
I went for a hike to watch the sunrise and saw a group of young deer frolicking in the morning mist.
It was a fawn dew party.
– Author Unknown –
Two Texans were bragging about how big their ranches are.
The first guy said “Well I’ll put it to you this way, I can get in my truck before sunrise, drive all day long, and by sundown I still haven’t hit the other side of my spread.”
The other fella said, “Yeah, I used to have a truck like that.”
– Author Unknown –
One of the best things about Daylight Saving Time is that the clock in my car will finally be correct again.
– Author Unknown –
Three members of the Munching Moose Tree and Hedge Maintenance Service were wrongly accused of attacking a man.
The Story: “Alberta RCMP now say they are attending a medical emergency… that involves a moose in the area (urban) after issuing a wildlife warning for a ‘moose attack’…” Date: November 3, 2021, 6:18 PM. Source: CBC News
Later, an addition to the CBC report said: “RCMP had issued a wildlife warning, but have since said the incident was a medical emergency.”
A CTV News report (at 6:52 PM) said: “…when officers arrived, they discovered that the moose, a mom and her two calves, hadn’t come into contact with anyone and the man had instead suffered a “medical emergency.”
Thirty four minutes. That is the difference in time between the CBC report and the CTV report. It only took 34 minutes for the CTV reporter to clarify that the moose did not attack anyone. That won’t, however, stop a moose attack story from spreading faster than the truth.
Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it.
– Jonathan Swift, The Examiner, Nov. 9, 1710 –
It’s well understood that there’s a bias to our sharing negative over positive news, and also a bias to sharing surprising over unsurprising news.
– Deb Roy, co-author ‘The spread of true and false news online’ –
Is there an upside to the false part of this story?
Maybe. People might be more wary of moose and stay away from them.
Maybe not. People might try to scare the moose away and that might not end well for the people or the moose.
I’ll be glad when the moose have left the ‘big city’ and returned to their ‘rural roots’!
Two milestones to celebrate – my 12th Blogging Anniversary and my 1000th post on this blog; (another 87 posts – the more serious and political ones – are at my alternate identity, Counter Current)!
Highlights (and a few low lights) of the past twelve years:
How many people can say they get frequent visits from the Munching Moose Tree and Hedge Maintenance Service?
_____________________________
Our property was also home to a Great Horned Owl family that nested in a large spruce tree on the edge of our driveway.
I also did 138 Wild-life stories that document all the birds, bugs and animals I saw and 88 posts about Plants.
_____________________________
On the Humour front, I did 95 posts of funny Quotations and 1000 posts that had at least one moment of happiness embedded in the verbiage.
_____________________________
I’ve posted 45 Craft Projects. The interior decor of the Red House reminds me of the front of the family fridge when there were school age kids in our house: a bunch of crafts that sometimes only a ‘mother’ can love…
_____________________________
“Into each life a little rain must fall.”
In 2012, The Car Guy was in a bad motorcycle accident. Man and bike both recovered, though the Harley looked like new after the restoration and The Car Guy – not so much.
In 2013 there was a lot of rain. Our entire Cabin Community was destroyed. Though we weren’t able the save much from our cabin, the Car Guy did manage to salvage our old lawnmower!
_____________________________
My review wouldn’t be complete without a mention of Covid-19. I did about 40 posts about the virus, none of which went viral…
2, 4, 6, 8… Who Needs to Isolate?
My blogging life started in November 2009 during the peak of the second wave of the novel virus H1N1pdm09 pandemic. It was also known as the ‘Swine Flu’. The Cornell Daily Sun joked about the pig connection with the headline: ‘It’s the End of the World As We Know It, And I Feel Swine…’
I’ve also lived through two other relatively serious pandemics – two Avian flus: the Asian flu of 1957-1958 and the Hong Kong Flu of 1968-1970 . How did all three of these pandemics compare to Covid-19? No one will ever really know. Covid cases, hospitalizations and deaths have been tracked differently and the collateral damage from lock downs, reduction in non-covid medical treatment and school closures will be difficult to measure.
Is “Baby It’s Cold Outside” a Deeply Offensive Song about Climate Change Denialism?
My blogging ‘career’ also coincided with COP15 (Conference of the Parties) which was held in Copenhagen in late 2009. COP26 (the 2021 version) is in full swing in Glasgow. 21,000 delegates, 13,000 observers and 3,000 members of the media will talk about how to cut emissions… do they understand the irony?
I’ll end this retrospective with this:
My blog is a collection of answers people don’t want to hear to questions they didn’t ask.
― Sebastyne Young –
First Date
Jeanne Robertson was a professional speaker who specialized in down home humor. In this video she speaks, as she often does, about her husband, Jerry, who she lovingly called ‘Left Brain’ (Jerry is the man in the green sweater). Jeanne and Jerry died within months of each other in 2021, but Jeanne’s special brand of humour lives on in her many videos.
Do you remember your first date at a Drive Through Hamburger place? Did it feature the accidental escape of ketchup from one of those little ketchup packages, such that there was more ketchup on the girl’s good white blouse than on the guy’s french fries?
It Has to be 9PM Somewhere:
When I was a kid, getting put to bed at 9 PM, I couldn’t wait until I was a grown-up and could stay up until whatever time I wanted. That time is, apparently, 9 PM.
– Author Unknown –
The recent referendum in our Province (that asked if we wanted to stop changing our clocks twice a year) was 49.8% for and 51.2% against. I am disappointed, though not surprised that half of the people wanted that ‘extra’ hour of light at the beginning of the day and the other half at the end of the day. On the positive side, when the clocks change again in early November, most of the clocks in my clock collection will be on time again.
An Idea for Christmas – Borrow the Neighbours Kid for your Family Christmas Photo:
Get your relatives speaking to one another again by sending a heartfelt Christmas card with a picture of your family with an extra child nobody knows.
– Author Unknown –
Beep Beep! Has PETA ruled on Cruelty to Cartoon Coyotes?
PETA is asking Major League Baseball to stop using the term “bullpen” to describe the area where pitchers warm up and instead use the term “arm barn.” The nonprofit organization argued that saying “bullpen” is insensitive to cows in a news release on Thursday.
– Sports Washington –
I’d Watch the News if This Happened:
If liar’s pants really did catch on fire, watching the news would be a lot more fun.
– fb/New and Interesting –
Tree Hugging When Lumber Prices are Off the Charts:
Another Dog Tail from Olive and Mabel
A Motorcycle Joke
If my name was David and I had a boy, I would have to name him Harley. That way, he could introduce himself “I’m Harley, David’s son.”
– Dad Jokes –
Amusives 