Journal Entries
Sex and the (Single) Guinea Pig
Posted Jan 17, 2013
Ah, nature. Ah, the human race. Which is weirder? Apparently, in England - I'm not saying, 'In the UK', because I believe our other Researchers know this already, if not, they can ask Gnomon - news hasn't got around about the humble but adorable cavy.
It's a sex maniac, people. And, according to the Brighton RSPCA, 'they breed at the rate of knots.'
It seems that about four years ago, a nice lady in Kent bought two of the little darlings. You know, furry, bright-eyed pacifists that make gurgling noises and whistle when you open the fridge door, because fridge=lettuce. Unfortunately, the kids in the pet shop were ignorant of the facts of guinea-pig life. They sold her 1 male + 1 female.
Result: Chaos.
By the time the RSPCA stepped in, there were about 100 of the precious things. Now, it's always been my dream to own a herd of guinea pigs, but I imagine the bills were mounting up. Not to mention that cleaning up after them is labour-intensive, although we had a British friend once whose guinea pigs were housebroken. They'd been trained by Maxi the rabbit, who could do anything. Maxi even intimidated the German police. When they showed up at the door, he put his ears forward and thumped. The cops were impressed. Maxi was protective of his personal guinea pig herd.
The furry horde has been transferred to Brighton, so MVP and others in the area have an opportunity to help out here. KentOnline has the story.
http://www.kentonline.co.uk/sittingbourne_messenger/news/2013/january/15/womans_shock_at_guinea_pigs.aspx
We can't believe people aren't forewarned about the dangers of guinea pig husbandry. As a public service, we offer the following:
1. A link to 'Pigs is Pigs' by Ellis Parker Butler.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2004/2004-h/2004-h.htm
This classic story not only mocks bureacracy, but hammers home the basic tenet: Don't turn your back on guinea pigs. They don't know the meaning of the word 'abstinence'.
2. Instructions from me on How to Sex a Guinea Pig.
Even if your pet shop attendant is too busy listening to her mp3 player to bother doing this, you should.
Step One: Hold guinea pig gently in one hand and invert. It will look at you quizzically, but take no other action.
Step Two: Locate a spot in the groin area, left or right of centre. Poke gently.
Step Three: If something emerges, you are holding a Male Guinea Pig. He will look a bit surprised. Maybe he didn't know, either. But be sure he will figure it out soon enough to become a great-great-great-grandfather before the next Olympics.
3. A good video report on the doings in the UK.
http://screen.yahoo.com/embarrassed-woman-100-guinea-pigs-001015786.html
This video is better than BBC News. Why? Because it includes Captain Kirk. We approve of Broken News.
To sum up the lesson for today:
1. Two guinea pigs of the same gender=peace and quiet.
2. Two guinea pigs of the opposite genders=Malthusian nightmare.
There can be too much of a good thing.
Discuss this Journal entry [16]
Latest reply: Jan 17, 2013
The 'Value' of 'Orthography'
Posted Jan 14, 2013
Look out, world - there's another 'paradigm shift' in our 'future'. And it's all about quotation marks.
Sigh. I just noticed it last week, and it's already driving me insane. What is?
The placing of unnecessary quotation marks around words that aren't:
1. A direct quotation.
2. Being used ironically, or fictionally, or hypothetically.
I thought we got over this in the 20th Century, people. Up until mid-century, writing was full of quotation marks, mostly used to show that the writer knew that a word was slang, or a colloquialism. The writer used these quotation marks to show that he or she knew better than to talk like that. Call them snobby quotes, like writing:
The newsboy asked me if I had heard of Clara Bow. Apparently, she is 'the bee's knees'.
I find those interesting when I read old magazines and books. The quotation marks tell me that a phrase wasn't completely kosher currency back then. Nowadays, slang changes so much from week to week, as a rule, that those snobby quotation marks are a thing of the past. I'll bet nobody ever bothered writing:
I understand from the young folk that Justin Bieber is no longer 'awesome'. I believe that phrase has replaced 'da bomb'.
You get my drift.
However, British journalists seem to be sliding into a rapid overuse of quotation marks for some reason unfathomable to me.
Are they getting paid by the quotation?
Are they so afraid of being sued they wish to disavow their every statement?
Are they just in love with 'air quotes'?
What GIVES, already?
One place I'm noticing these otiose citation marks is yahoo.uk, and other up-to-the-minute 'news' sources. (Okay, I MEANT that ironically, hence the quotes.) I kept clicking on articles to see why the quotes were there. For example,
Police Find 'Bomb' under Car in Belfast
Now, when I read the article, I expected to find out that the 'bomb' turned out to be something else - like, say, a toaster. But no. It was a bomb. Not a 'bomb'. Back to what you were reading.
At first, I assumed this was less a new development than a sign that school-leavers were getting the content jobs over at Geek City. After all, who knows what goes on in their heads? But now I fear a trend.
A couple of people, Icy North included, have pointed out a link today, where Nick Reynolds of the BBC has been blogging about his h2g2 experiences. Interesting. Now, this gentleman is a professional. And he writes this header:
Notes on the “value” of “user generated content”#1
I can understand putting 'user-generated content' in quotation marks. Maybe he objects to the term. Maybe he thinks the term is demeaning to the content, or inaccurate in some way. He freely admits to a dislike of the word 'user', also correctly placed in quotation marks.
But what's wrong with the word 'value'? Either the content has value, or it doesn't. Value is not a terminus technicus, and it is not a quotation. Reynolds later queries:
Can you put a “value” on “love”?
Can you, indeed? How is 'love' different from love?
So. I'm 'worried' about this 'trend'. Pretty soon, most of our 'words' will be in 'quotation marks', and we won't know what we're 'talking' about.
Or has that already happened?
Discuss this Journal entry [49]
Latest reply: Jan 14, 2013
Magic from the Antique Shop: WWI Photos Still in Camera
Posted Jan 10, 2013
There's a lot of loose talk around this site, to the effect that:
1. Paper books are better than digital books, and people who 'like the feel and smell of REAL paper' are somehow more virtuous than those of us who are happy reading on a computer screen. (I worry about that smell part, I think it's an addiction...)
2. On the other hand, digital photography is MUCH superior to analogue photography, because it's:
a. Easier. (Trained monkeys...) and
b. Trendier. (What? You don't own a...?)
Now, I'll ignore the book business for right now, and concentrate on the photography. Here's a photographer/history buff who can demonstrate exactly what an analogue photograph can do that a digital one can't:
http://thephotopalace.blogspot.com.br/2013/01/french-wwi-images-found-still-in-camera.html
Oh, and if you click on that link, you can see some cool photos. They were taken during the Great War, almost a century ago. But nobody had seen them.
You see, they were still IN THE CAMERA. Until our blogger bought the camera in an antique store. He found the plates inside the camera, and printed them out. Talk about voices from the past.
Here's an old airplane, wrecked. Here are soldiers. Here's a French village. Here's a bomb, for pity's sake. Wow.
Our blogger explains why that wouldn't have happened with your digital thingamabob. But the chemicals and light had done their magic, and there it is... One image is a stereoscope. (Oh, yeah, I know about that computer imaging that produces 3D - yawn...)
This fellow is busy collecting primary-source history. Go here if you want to see some of his collection from an amazing trip someone took through the Russian Revolution:
http://thephotopalace.blogspot.com/2013/01/wwi-and-russian-revolution-photos-found.html
Now, we're really grateful for the digital revolution. After all, it is thanks to that revolution that we can now see these great photos. They can be stored in our electronic archives. But think about it: if somebody hadn't exposed some film to some light about a century ago, we wouldn't have had these images to store. I'm grateful for old technology, and the camera-toting pioneers who used it.
PS I know that Create has a challenge coming up: to dig up old family photos and write about them for h2g2. So you can help with the project...
Discuss this Journal entry [25]
Latest reply: Jan 10, 2013
Brits in Exile Find Sustenance in North Carolina Supermarket
Posted Jan 9, 2013
I don't know any exiled Brits around here - we've had Russians and Germans, and Caribbean islanders, and lost souls from California - but if they do show up, the local supermarket appears to be ready for them.
Elektra and I were doing something unusual this afternoon: browsing in the supermarket. That's because tomorrow is her birthday, and I wanted her to pick out some goodies she'd enjoy, like weird chocolate and fancy ice cream. While she was doing that, I was on the prowl for the possibility of gluten-free onion soup mix. This is the Holy Grail, because if we can find gluten-free onion soup mix, we can make dip for chips. I really can't spring for the $5-a-packet online stuff.
The fancy chocolate is in the aisle with the imported, 'ethnic' foodstuffs. There, sandwiched between the kosher foods and the Indian curry powders, was where I found it:
A tin of Spotted Dick. [WHAT?] Next to some tins of treacle. Treacle?
There it was: the mother lode of all foods to gladden the hearts of lost Englishmen. Yorkshire Gold tea. (At six bucks a packet, no thank you.) Packets of 'digestive biscuits'. Something called 'Jammy Dodgers', I think. Some cookies with a picture of a penguin on. Shepherd's Pie mix. HP sauce, in more than one flavour.
I don't know how you'd survive over here without HP sauce. Whatever that is.
I pointed all this out to Elektra, as soon as she'd picked out her Dove chocolates. She chuckled.
'Now we can tell Sean Bean to come for a visit,' was her comment.
Discuss this Journal entry [40]
Latest reply: Jan 9, 2013
A Maybe-Freebie Film Tip, and Some Words in Justification
Posted Jan 2, 2013
I was just sitting in the supermarket parking lot, waiting for Elektra to make a quick purchase, and listening to the radio preacher. I don't usually bother, but NPR was wailing on about politics and the 'classical' channel was making some awful noise. I despise late-19th-century programmatic music, it hurts my ears. So I ended up listening to the sermon.
The preacher, who sounded like a nice young man, was making good sense. He was telling people that they should read the Gospel of John, and do what Jesus said. What Jesus said was, 'Love one another as I have loved you.' He pointed out that Jesus said that was how people would know they were his followers, because they loved the way he did.
The problem, of course, is that most of the people - not ALL of them, but not a minority, in fact, MOST of them - who say they're Christians these days, aren't.
Because they don't love the way Jesus loved.
Oscar Schindler loved the way Jesus loved. (Yeah, and he drank, smoked, gambled, cussed, and fooled around on his wife. He still loved like Jesus.)
Francis of Assisi loved the way Jesus loved. (And acted like a lunatic, talking to birds and taking his clothes off in public. He started a cult, too.)
The ten Boom family loved the way Jesus loved. (And forged papers, broke the law, and dressed badly. They saved a few lives, then two of them lost their own.)
How do you know if you love the way Jesus loved? Make a checklist:
Would Jesus:
- Picket Planned Parenthood? Not on your life.
- Have a bumper sticker that said, 'Register Communists, Not Guns'? Get real.
- Oppose gay marriage? Are you kidding me? He'd be at the Gay Pride parade, laughing.
Would Jesus:
- Make friends with sex workers? Ayup. He did.
- Have dinner with crooks? There was this undersized guy named Zaccheus, and one named Matthew, and probably a few others we didn't get the names of. Grifters, the lot of them, but they stopped cheating people eventually.
- Play fast and loose with the 'rules' of society? Do you remember the 'harvesting grain on the Sabbath' incident? No? Well, it was all over Twitter...
I think you get the point. Now to the film recommendation, which may not seem to have much to do with the foregoing - but bear with me:
Modern humans need to learn ethical thinking, say I. And how better to do it than with entertainment? I may be prejudiced here, in favour of Jesus' favourite teaching method, but still, I think you'll like this web series.
It's called 'The Booth at the End'. So far, there are two seasons available online - five 23-minute episodes in each season.
Whether it's a freebie or not may depend on where you are. In Ireland and the UK, I understand, it's on Netflix. In Canada, it runs on TV. Here in the US, you can watch it for free on hulu.com.
Here's the homepage for the UK:
http://thebooth.fxuk.com/
The show is dead clever, and worth watching by writers, to see what you can do with a diner as a set. Every scene takes place in a diner booth - but you'll swear you've been all over the place. The plot? Each person who comes to see the man in the booth (he doesn't have a name) wants something. The man looks in his notebook, and tells them what they must do in order to obtain their desire. It is up to them whether they wish to do it. Moral dilemmas ensue.
Sound simple? It isn't.
I hope you can manage to catch the show. It amazed me with its thoughtfulness and the depth of the performances.
I just wish they'd show it in Sunday School. Those people need to be doing more WWJD-type thinking.
Discuss this Journal entry [7]
Latest reply: Jan 2, 2013
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