Category Archives: Uncategorised

Photo credit: ForestWander.

Ontario hasn’t had a warm or sunny spring so far by any stretch of the imagination.

It snowed yesterday. We’re supposed to get a little more snow today and later on this week.

I’ve gotten to the point now where I’m making irrational deals with Mother Nature.

March was chilly. Now April is cold and snowy as well. Does this mean that you’ll be giving us an unseasonable cool summer as well?

Every once in a while Ontario has a  warm, mild June that lasts until autumn. It’s glorious. My allergies are milder when that happens, and nobody has to experience the misery that is breathing in August humidity or sweating your way through a subway ride.

Mother Nature might be a metaphor, but I still say she owes us.  I’ll trade her one cold, wet spring for a beautifully cool summer.

Now to wait and see if she’ll accept it. 😉

What irrational things have you done recently?

Here is this week’s list of blog posts and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Sex and Suffering: The Tragic Life of the Courtesan in Japan’s Floating World. The title says it all. Some of the details about the lives of geishas and courtesans were tough to read.

10 Rules for Thinking About White People. One of the biggest reasons why I enjoy the Abagond blog so much is that it posts satirical stuff like this.

First Sign of Green. This reminded me of all of the deer my dad spots whenever we’re driving on rural roads together. He has such a sharp eye for noticing wildlife.

This Is Not an April Fool’s via hedwyg. It takes a lot of courage to talk about this sort of thing in public. I don’t know how many of you know hedwyg from her various accounts online, but she’s been a great source of inspiration and support for me.

Tend the Fire via david_duChemin. I really loved this.

This Is Why You Shouldn’t Believe That Exciting New Medical Study. There’s a lot of interesting stuff to read here.

On Misleading Questions via CGAyling. I’ve been wondering the same thing lately.

What have you been reading?

    I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.

The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.

I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me I
Could make assignable, — and then
There interposed a fly,

With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
I could not see to see.

– Emily Dickinson

My ninth grade English teacher planned a whole lesson around this poem. We actually did an entire unit on Emily Dickinson’s poetry and life. It’s one of the reasons why I became such a huge fan of this genre in the first place.

There’s something about this poem that’s stuck with me. The speaker in it is dying. She and her loved ones know she’s dying. They make all kinds of plans to smooth along the process.

Then she (the speaker) actually dies. What happens after that? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

It makes me wonder what Emily expected to happen after death. Her family attended a Congregationalist church, but I always got the impression that she had a mind of her own. Maybe she agreed with them. Maybe she didn’t.

I wish I could sit down with her and ask her what she really believed.

These are the things this writer thinks about when I’m sitting quietly in the corner. 😉

Video by Will Burrand-Lucas.

This is really cute. I can’t believe the meerkats even allow Will to approach their babies. That takes a lot of trust!

The less people know, the more stubbornly they know it. The intelligent person hesitates, ponders, wavers. The unintelligent never wavers, never hesitates. Where the wise will whisper, the fool simply declares from the housetops. – Osho

I’ve never read any of Osho’s books. The topics he chooses to write about don’t interest me, but I stumbled across this quote from him recently and really liked it.

I came down with a doozy of a cold over the weekend, so my brain is foggy. These are the things I think about when the fog lifts temporarily:

Why does this seem to be so common?

Is it intelligence or education that makes people more willing to admit what they don’t know?

Will we ever find a cure for the Dunning-Kruger effect?

What do you think?

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, poems, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

From A Writing Fable or Glimpse of the Pearl via everettpoetry:

ravenlike
I gather bits of foil and bright colored string
shining objects that catch my eye

Woman abandoned as baby in Macon in 1915 dies at age 100. Annie Ione lived quite an exciting life. Her story should really be made into a book or movie.

The Terrible Tragedy of the Healthy Eater. Okay, this was really funny.

Mistakes I’ve Made “Debating” Online via NonProphetess. There’s a lot of smart advice here. I use some of these techniques in real life as well.

Home In Your Dreams via OlliCrusoe. Definitely follow the instructions in this post. They make the whole thing even better.

Free Art Books. I just found out that the Metropolitan Museum of Art is giving away free art ebooks on their website.  There are several hundred different options to choose from, and they cover a wide range of time periods and styles. I highly recommend checking them out.

What have you been reading?

Who else is running low on new books to read?

I’m a genre omnivore. I’ve been reading quite a few non-fiction books about psychology and sociology recently, but most of them haven’t been capturing my attention longterm.

Genres I love:

• Science fiction
• Medical nonfiction
• Science
• Fairy tales
• Psychology

Genres I have the occasional, sordid fling with:

• History
• Fantasy
• Romance
• True stories about mischevious pets that you just know are going to die of cancer/old age/stupidity in the final chapter.

What I’ve read recently that was really good:

My Dear Gnome from ChezEddy on Vimeo.

This is a short film about a garden gnome and a deer who decide to play a game of checkers.

I was impressed by how much storytelling ChezEddy fit into about one minute.

I can’t say anything else about this video without giving away spoilers. Go check it out for yourselves!

Photo credit: Marco Bellucci.

Jonah Skeptic.

His name showed up in my Google Analytics report recently.

I wish I knew who he really was.

I can’t find anything about him online.

He’s probably not even an actual person, but he sure should be with a name like that. It’s a great one.

I almost let this post die quietly in my queue so I could keep the pseudonym for myself. I barely spend any time writing about religion or atheism, though, and I also think it’s a good thing for women to identify themselves as women online as much as possible.

Are there people who will treat you differently because of this? Of course. But I do think there’s something to be said for standing up and being counted if you’re able to do so.

Jonah Skeptic sounds brash to me. Is he kind of person who veers Thanksgiving dinner conversations into arguments about politics, religion, and money? Does he ask pointed questions about other people’s sex lives when they ask him why he’s still single?

He probably likes to say shocking things for the fun of it and drinks Scotch in front of teetotallers.

No doubt he despises sentimentality in all of its forms….except when it comes to snuggling with his childhood teddy bear, Ursus, at night. No one is ever too cynical or too old for that.

He has a snarky exterior, but I’d bet he’s the kind of person who picked up both of his cats from the local animal shelter.

There’s something satisfying about giving Jonah Skeptic a backstory. It makes him more likeable and me a little less disappointed that he doesn’t already exist. If he ever shows up in my Analytics history again, I’ll add a few more sneak peeks into his past.

What personal mysteries have you solved lately?

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, poems, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Back in the Shack via jdubqca. I really liked the imagery in this poem. It reminds me of the hikes my parents used to take with us when we were kids. We never found a shack like this one, but we did discover some pretty cool caves.

Fire Safety 101 via electricfire89. Did you see the twist coming?

California Will be Bone Dry in a Year, NASA’s Top Water Scientist Predicts via Buffytuf. I expect their drought to raise U.S. food prices and possible lower the cost of (some) Californian real estate. It’s hard to live somewhere that doesn’t have water, after all.

Modern Curses. All of them would be incredibly annoying.

Rogue Wounds. I was fascinated by the stories in this article.

Google Feud. This game challenges you to guess what other people have googled. You’re given the beginning of the question or phrase and then have to provide the final word. It was a lot of fun.

From Fixed Menu:

The most coveted items on the tray are the salt and pepper packets. Every person I surveyed, without fail, used the word “bland” in describing chow hall food. Rather than prepare separate trays for inmates with high cholesterol or blood pressure, the kitchen serves low-sodium meals for the entire prison population.

What have you been reading?