… here’s a little something I came across to brighten your day …
Category Archives: The Life and Times of …
The Latest Discovery In The Penguin World
The Bird Is The Word
What does a parakeet, a pierce of string, an empty soft-drink bottle, and a bit of PVC pipe, have in common?
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You are so not gonna guess.
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This is beyond cool
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And my brain is already constructing all sorts of versions. I mean, what if I used several different types of string?
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Or a stick instead of the pipe.
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Oh, right, yes, the video.
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Coming right up…
(I discovered this video via ‘Instructables‘, which is a truly fantabulous place for anyone who’s ever wanted to make, well, anything really!)
And now, you know why this post is called what it is …
A Conversation Between My Cognitive brain And My Intuitive Brain During A Migraine Cluster
The players: Cognitive Brain – henceforth known as ‘CB’, and Intuitive Brain, aka ‘IB’
IB: “I want a cup of tea. We’ll feel better with a cuppa tea.”
CB: “Yep, OK, um, how do we do that?”
IB: “Do what?”
CB: “The tea thing.”
IB: (already moving on to laying down and staying as still as possible) “Tea? Are you making tea? Great idea. We’ll feel better with a cuppa tea.”
CB: (being careful to not move too fast, slowly looks around the kitchen where it has spent many happy hours over the last eight years and usually knows where everything is and is fairly certain it’s made thousands of cups of tea) “Yeah, but how do we do that?”
IB: (sighing pointedly from the chaise lounge where it has swooningly retired) “Never mind. Just a glass of water.”
CB: (still standing, rather wobbly, in the center of the kitchen, trying to recreate the steps required to get a glass of water, stumbles upon the most vital question of all) “Where are the glasses?”
-oOo-
As I was writing this one of my favourite pieces of classical music happened to be playing in the background. I can only tolerate low-key (pun unintended) orchestral pieces in this state … enjoy.
Bah!… and Humbug!!!
In an email from WordPress this evening …
‘…On June 1 we’ll be retiring our older WordPress.com editor and transitioning to the more recent (and more powerful) WordPress block editor…’
They do retain the option for us to use the Classic Editor though, so there’s that, though I’m guessing it’ll have a limited lifespan.
But in honour of the occasion, let me reiterate …
Simon’s Cat – wait for the end-credit scene
Poor Simon … he can’t catch a break …
The Running Of The Ducks
Just another workday at a winery in South Africa.
The winery? …Vergenoegd Lȍw Wine Estate.
The Workforce? … Pest Control and Fertilization at the same time …
They are well treated and when their ready to retire they are moved to an island on the property where they live their lives out in peace.
A bit more info from the Atlas Obscura article that arrived in my email in-box this morning… and the winery website.
… and another video … because we all need more Indian Runner Ducks in our lives today…
-oOo-
May these times pass us by unscathed, but if by chance we are scathed, may we live to tell the tale, because such tales as these need to be told.
Rage … and …
Listening to the CBC news today (Monday 23rd March, 2020) – Our (Canadian) Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – (to paraphrase) ‘Stay home voluntarily, or we will make you,’ – sounding a lot like a benevolent yet stern patriarch admonishing his errant children. Sanctimonious bastard.
(I get that the threat needs to be there to wake up the last of the scared, the panicked, the downright ijits, I do)
But … that this wasn’t done weeks ago enrages me. That governments the world over have not acted proactively, enrages me. That hundreds of thousands of people WILL DIE unnecessarily because of these things, enrages me.
That healthcare workers are begging anyone, any institution, who has Personal Protective Equipment (masks, gloves, etc) to donate it to them, (and that this wasn’t mandated weeks ago) enrages me.
I have entire pages on how humanity, institutions, governments, businesses, have consistently and willfully ignored the information that WAS THERE FOR ALL TO SEE over the last three months, and that enrages me.
Going to scream into a pillow for a moment … be back in a little while …
-oOo-
…. the storm of my rage, at least this wave, has passed.
I have many, many, more pages of the beautiful things individual people have done for each other over the last three months.
Rhetorical question – When did ‘governing’ go from FOR the people, to OVER the people? … it probably occurred at the same time the ‘people’ decided they didn’t want to be responsible for the consequences of their own actions.
Either way, there’s not a government left in the world that’s worth fighting for, or dying for.
I know there are good people within all governments, trying their damnedest to make a difference …. just like there were people on the Titanic trying their best to make a difference, but no matter what they did the ship still sank. The good people saved a few more lives, and other good people (or the ones who has the most money to lose – sometimes a bit of both) shifted the circumstances that set up the situation in the first place, a little …while a few other people figured out how they could get around the shifted circumstances and behave just as they had before.
I’m not asking you to start a revolution, well not all of you anyway, but when ‘things’ go back to ‘normal’ (even though that ‘normal’ is gone for ever for all of us – and was never real in the first place) remember this ‘Time of the Plague’ and do your damnedest to shift the circumstances that caused it in the first place.
Tell me, what are you going to do?
Staying Sane, And Finding Hope, In The Time Of The Plague
Yesterday I wrote this …
Yes, it is a plague, only we don’t call it that anymore do we? Far too many dire associations.
But aren’t times dire?
As more and more of the world, the global connectivity, shuts down, more countries shut their doors, and any ‘official’ number of cases need to be multiplied by a factor of ten to come anywhere near a realistic number, the word ‘dire’ comes more and more to mind.
… and that’s as far as I got.
I was planning on deconstructing the concept, and bring out the ‘hope’ in the title of this post, but one minute I was sitting at my computer writing, and the next I was sitting in the glorious sunshine in our backyard (sunshine at last!) sobbing my heart out.
I broke, no lasting damage done, but I broke.
And it’s not that I haven’t been looking after myself both physically and emotionally, but it wasn’t enough without something to empty my full-to-the-brim-with-emotions, heart.
Sometimes you have to sit in the sunshine and cry, big diaphragm-ache-inducing tears.
At some point it will happen to you too, if it hasn’t already, and that’s a good thing. We can’t go around feeling like an exposed and raw nerve forever.
Chuck Wendig wrote in his latest post, ‘…We’re all in mourning from the death of normalcy…’ In his wonderful Chuck Wendig way, he spells it out so clearly, that he’s feeling, ‘… definitely, absolutely, unfuckwithably not okay…’ Go read the whole piece, it’s worth it.
After yesterday my chest doesn’t feel as though it’s going to crack under the strain. I’ve been weeping on and off since then, at the oddest things, so that I smile as I weep. (I’ll be OK, just not quite yet)
Point in case, cats and dominos …
Now That The W.H.O (World Health Organization) Has Stated The Obvious …
What has actually changed in our lives?
The virus has still been out in the world since at least early January. Panic-buying toilet paper is still a thing. People are still dying, sadly. Others are still recovering, an impressive 80-88% of them, and some are not even feeling ill.
World governments will probably/hopefully now institute the measures that needed to have been in place from the beginning.
This virus still remains something that we as a species have never been exposed to before, but as climatic regions continue to be in flux there will be a great many things we will encounter that will challenge us equally. The impact of those challenges will depend on how we choose to engage with them.
So, for this one, don’t breathe on more people than necessary and don’t let ’em breathe on you. Do the social distancing tango and wash your hands regularly. Check on your neighbours, from a distance, and make sure they’re doing OK. Nothing fancy, just a ‘Hi, how are you doing?’ will suffice.
Many thanks to Dr John Campbell for his daily, factual, no-nonsense, updates.
Stay informed, and stay safe, my friends.
This is Dr Campbell’s latest video.
