Fathers Day Memory

My dad once landed a seagull with a fishing rod.



On Vancouver Island, we kids had a small fish on a fishhook and were casting it out and reeling it in with a fishing rod to tease the seagulls as they dived at it. Then dad took a turn and cast it way further than we did. When he jerked the rod to keep the fish from the gulls, the hook snagged on one of their legs.



That was quite a site - a panicky seagull flying, but getting reeled in by a fishing rod. I was supposed to help hold the seagull while Dad removed the hook - but I was too small and/or scared. Dad managed to reel it close, get the wings under control, and remove the hook.



Right after that a hundred seagulls flew over and evacuated their bowels. Really whitewashed that wharf too - total fluke that no-one got hit. Years later I read that that's a typical response from birds to distress to one of their members, and I could immediately confirm it with empirical evidence. I guess each Dad teaches his kids about biology in his own way.

My Assistant Didn't Update My Blog

What a ripoff - I thought this blog was being updated automatically with my Tintin-esque adventures. I guess I'll have to do it myself until I can get restaffed. I'll use the time-honoured way to blog without actually needing mad writing skillz. Yes, it's another pot pourri o' ideas that I'd otherwise likely never expound upon.



• The majority of Richard Cheese's lounge versions of songs are better than the original. It's funny to recognize the words when I've heard Cheese's version first.






• My brother Mike and I went to a Steven Wright(?) concert at the Winspear. We were holding a ticket for someone who might not make it. When it was past the time when he would've shown up, we went to sell his ticket. Mike's jacket was unzipped, and he kept his hands in the pockets of his jacket, which made him look like those old-time movie gangsters when he gestured. He approached a big guy who was waiting around looking like he wanted tickets to the sold-out show:

Mike: Hey, you looking for tickets? [gesture]
Big Guy: You got a situation?

Perfect delivery. That was so cool, so quick. I still smile and laugh spontaneously thinking about it/him/them. I wonder what that guy's doing.



• Someone should do a porn-comedy where guys at a bachelor party inadvertantly calls a clown agency instead of a stripper/escort agency. The gal-clown needs the money for college and doesn't want to waste the trip over, or whatever cheesy plot they always have, so she ends up on her knees in front of a guy. Her nose beeps every time...well, you get the idea.








• Let's say your dog was Cerberus, the three-headed dog guarding Hades. How would you reward the good head without encouraging the ill behaviour of the bad heads? I guess it'd have to be petting and not food. Well, I suppose only the good head would taste the treat, but the others would get the benefit of the nutrition. Hmmm. Also, does the middle head act like the middle child? Does it crave attention? Would it be the one wearing a zany toque even though it's as hot as Hell?




• Like my dad, I now have jars attached to the overhead floor joists in my basement workshop. I don't have them organized or filled yet. I was thinking of something meta, like a giant jar to hold smaller jars. I wonder about the biggest and smallest jars that I should have. Maybe one of those Costco-sized jars of 50 pickled eggs would be cool. I kept one of those tiny screw-on lip balm containers for the other extreme.



• The song "Mrs Robinson" was originally named "Mrs Roosevelt", after Eleanor Roosevelt. It was changed because it was first used for the movie "The Graduate". That's why it still has a reference to Joe Dimaggio; Paul Simon was writing about Roosevelt and Dimaggio as humble heroes.



• My friend Joe and I were having a few ghetto-beers in his garage. We had bottles, but needed an opener. Being a dude, Joe picked up the nearest workable opener: a plastic brake fluid container. Joe was opening his beer with his back to me when the cap to the brake fluid flew off. All I could see was red fluid spraying all over the place. Holy cripes did I freak out for a few seconds. It took me a while to realize that Joe wasn't in shock or doing a stunningly authentic impression of the Black Knight from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail."







• If someone starts mouthing off about primatologists and you want to really sound like you know what you're talking about, look bored when Dian Fossey or Jane Goodall get brought up. Then throw in the name Birutė Galdikas.

They were all part of the so-called Leakey's Angels, a group of three prominent researchers on primates (Fossey on Gorillas; Goodall on Chimpanzees; and Galdikas on Orangutans) sent by archaeologist Louis Leakey to study great apes in their natural environments.

Bonus 1: Galdikas is Canadian.
Bonus 2: Sounds like Gul Dukat, badass Cardassian in Star Trek: DS9
Bummer: Cardassian sounds like pinhead reality-show clan Kardashian.



• I like videos of dogs doing interesting things (cats too, but only if it's crazy spectacular). There's the dog attacking the small shark, the dog fighting off a bull, and a dog saving another dog on a freeway. That last one really choked me up for some reason. I remember that freeway being crazy busy.






• Uber "Jeopardy" champ and loveable Mormon nerd Ken Jennings on answering a clue about a nonstandard form of American English characteristically spoken by African-Americans in the United States:

What be Ebonics?



• Ultimate Torch and Twanchor: I like that Rachel Maddow on MSNBC. She's calm and professional, as opposed to the self-aggrandizing, constant-heightened-scare-tactic Wolf Blitzer et al on CNN. Or, of course, the clowns at Faux/Sun News. I'm not the biggest fan of her kd lang haircut, but I guess it works for her. Maybe I should mute the Faux/Sun News hottie-bimbos and have Maddow do the voiceover. Come to think of it, there's that PBS hottie who's just that kind of combo...



• Tissues and toilet paper are made differently. If you're going to throw it down the toilet, use toilet paper. Tissues aren't made to break down to avoid clogging sewer pipes.



• Sign on Roadrunner Pizza near my house:

1 topping 12' pizza $7.99

Zounds, a 12 foot diameter pizza for under 8 bucks...I'm buying! Might get killed on extra toppings.






• You know those giant Easter Island statue heads? They're called Moai - and they're not just heads, they have bodies too. The statues had just sunk or had dirt built up around them. To be fair, the head:body ratio still isn't anthropomorphically accurate.

The other thing about them is that, although they're lined up around the island near the ocean, most of them point inwards, not outwards. Drawings always get it backwards.



• On the way to work at the same time every day, I make up little backstories and dialogues for the people I always see:

- Hey, funny-walking gal, you're running a little behind schedule this morning.

- That guy standing like a flamingo at the bus-stop is a self-made expert on kinesiology and shoe efficiency...but not hip problems.

- I'm glad to see the older gal and the younger gal chatting at the bus-stop - I'll bet they say: We should get together for coffee - they but never do.

- Sometimes I see peoples' gestures and it kills me not to know what they're talking about. One day I've just got to stop and ask...







• Whenever I carry something in a plastic bag between the garage and house, I walk very carefully, lest I alert Sophie. Sophie is the dog next door. If she hears me, I'll have to pet her for minutes and minutes and try to get through to her that I'm not hoarding dogfood or having anything to do with other dogs.



• The neighbour-gal across the alley does hula-hooping to music on nice days. That's so totally not something I would do, yet it works on her. Look for it to be the next big exercise craze.