General

Litter pickup and watering crows

A while back I decided to use a picker and go out and occasionally pick up the bits of litter around our condo complex. One of those “If you want something done, do it yourself” things that has become a primary philosophy of mine. I usually do every Sunday and other days as needed, covering most of the complex and the sidewalks.

Today’s haul looked like this:

Not visible: About a thousand cigarette butts

I also watered some of the trees in the heritage courtyard this afternoon using a hose with a spring-loaded nozzle (the only way to water with Stage 3 water restrictions in effect). Shortly after I started a crow showed up and stood just inside the range of the water, lapping it up as it fell down on her/him. Eventually three other crows joined in, drinking from the small puddles that eventually formed, showering under the spray, or even attempting a bath in one of the bigger puddles. It was cute. Hopefully these crows won’t attack me now when I enter their turf.

Anyway, this is what I post when I can’t think of anything else. Hopefully my brain will be more inventive moving forward.

My mind has been mindless

Sometimes I post a flurry of nonsense and other times my mind just rattles around, shrugs and says, “I dunno!”

The last few days it’s been doing the latter. I can’t say why these things happen when they do–I could probably write a bestselling self-help book if I figured it out–but it’s been persistent, if intermittent, since I was old enough to scribble mostly inside the lines.

In celebration of finally posting some nonsense, albeit not a flurry of it, here is, of course, typing cat.

Billy Joel, 1993: What did he know?

In the opening track “No Man’s Land” on Billy Joel’s last album, River of Dreams, is the line:

I’ve seen the children with their boredom and their vacant stares 

This immediately brought to mind people staring at their smartphones and scrolling endlessly through social media (which admittedly is a problem not just affecting The Youths, but everyone). The thing is, the album and song came out in 1993, which is 33 years ago as I write this.

1993 effectively predates the internet (as the public knows it) and predates social media and smart device addiction by decades.

Which makes me wonder, what did Joel know back then? Or was 1993 a lot worse than I remember?

1993, per Wikipedia.

Protein is the new black. Low sugar is also the new black.

I know this because the local grocery store I shop at is now selling a conspicuously large number of food items that prominently note how much PROTEIN is in them. Over in the cereal aisle, they have even moved all the PROTEIN-rich cereals into one section of the shelf for convenience, regardless of brand or flavour.

Likewise, low sugar is also everywhere, but especially in that same cereal aisle. Today I observed multigrain low sugar Frosted Flakes. This is about as close as you can get to selling low sugar low sugar. The cereal used to be called SUGAR Frosted Flakes. But now you can buy it with less sugar than most of the allegedly healthy “adult” cereals, which may now contain a bucket of protein, but also huge mounds of sugar.

Does Tony the Tiger have no teeth? Did they all rot out from too much sugar? Questions!

Still cereal-related, General Mills seems to be going totally bananas with the Cheerios brand. I remember when it was Cheerios, then they added Honey Nut Cheerios. Today I spied two new trial runs to go with the other thousand already out there: Strawberry, and Cookies ‘n Crème (yes, with the accent). Both are high in protein, which…I don’t think people buying a cookies and crème cereal are that concerned about protein. But what do I know? I’m not a marketing research wizard.

Strangely, the Canadian version (pictured above) appears to have more protein than the American version:

But if you read the fine print, they are including 4g of protein from the milk you’d add:

It says 8 g PROTEIN WITHOUT MILK. Trust me!

But the American version shows two values, 8g and 10g, (with milk?) so it still doesn’t seem to add up the same. Both use one cup as the serving size. Maybe Americans have bigger cups.

Anyway, here’s to our protein-rich, low sugar future. We’ll be healthier and fit in no time.

I have a second spider in the bathtub

I don’t know why my bathtub has suddenly become a spider hotspot, but it has. The two cellar spiders are at opposite ends, which is probably a good thing, since they eat other spiders. Or maybe it’s a bad thing, because eventually all corners of the tub will be occupied by cellar spiders protecting its territory.

There are worse problems to have, I suppose.

Cellar spider #2. Hopefully not second in a series.

Cow abducting UFO

I only wish I’d thought of this first.

Best comments on Mastodon, where I nicked this from:

“I want to believe.”

“Udderly ridiculous.”

I have a spider in the bathtub

And an internet pal has informed me that in Portugal this means I have money coming my way. I kind of doubt that, but would welcome it!

The spider is hanging just above the soap tray. We’re leaving it be for now, since it’s not in the way or anything. I do wonder what sort of meals it gets from the tub, though.

Spider: He is our hero

The Blog Questions Challenge: My answers (for 2026)

FUNNY NOTE: After writing this post, I recalled I'd seen this blogging question challenge last year and couldn't remember if I'd answered the questions back then. It turns out I did, so I have now answered the questions twice, which makes me a bit of a dope, but also provides an interesting comparison between what I wrote on January 26, 2025 and today, June 3, 2026.

It's worth reading the older version, some of the answers are more fleshed out than in this post. But read both and enjoy the blogginess of it all!

While perusing Bubbles, I came across a blog post that linked back to a Blog Questions Challenge that I believe originated on Bear. That link led to a non-Bear version, which I am posting and replying to below.

The questions:

  • Why did you start blogging in the first place?
  • What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it?
  • Have you blogged on other platforms before?
  • How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that’s part of your blog?
  • When do you feel most inspired to write?
  • Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?
  • What’s your favourite post on your blog?
  • Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?

Answers:

Why did you start blogging in the first place?

I like to write and I’ve always enjoyed journaling and noodling around writing my thoughts down. When blogs started to become a thing, I was just technically capable enough to slap together a blog of my own in February 2005.

What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it?

I am using WordPress and creolened.com has been using WP for over 21 years now. When the WP CEO started getting, er, a bit eccentric a few years ago, I started looking at alternative platforms, but none had all the things I wanted. And 20 years of inertia is hard to fight. In 2005 WordPress struck me as having the right balance of features and ease of use that worked for me. Admittedly, I didn’t really try anything else, because WP clicked pretty quickly.

Have you blogged on other platforms before?

I have dabbled and experimented with the following:

  • Ghost
  • Posthaven
  • Bear
  • Pika
  • Write.as
  • Probably more I’m forgetting

The only ones that survive today are Write.as as a free account and Pika, which I subbed to for a year, then never really used (not a reflection on the platform).

How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that’s part of your blog?

I used the built-in editor in WordPress. And yes, I use blocks, I’ve tried fighting them before, but for the most part have adapted to them. But I have also used other programs to write and save blog posts before posting them here, with Obsidian, iA Writer and Ulysses (Mac) being the most common. If there’s a program that lets me export to WP, I’ll usually try it at least once, but most of the time I’m typing in the built-in editor.

When do you feel most inspired to write?

It varies, but it tends to be on the extremes, either early morning or late evening, probably because of the quiet (sometimes in the morning because I’m feeling zesty).

Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?

Drafts are where posts go to die. I rarely come back to a draft, so I write “live” and post immediately. This is also reflected in that most of my posts are not planned, just whatever flits through my mind at the moment.

What’s your favourite post on your blog?

There’s a few that I like going back to. For nostalgia, there’s My computer and video game history, an abridged edition and Magazines of yore -or- Back when I bought things to read on paper. I am also partial to my long review of the movie Prometheus. Re-reading the review is a lot more entertaining to me than watching the movie again. I also have some fiction here and there on the blog that is not bad, though most are prompts and experiments, so a little rough or incomplete. This one is nicely creepy: 1,000 creative writing prompts: 7 of 1,000 and of course I wrote a time travel story about a barista trying to kill Hitler. I have over 200 book reviews if you’re into those.

My viewpoint tends to be a bit jaded, but ultimately hopeful and a bit sarcastic. I realize it may not work for everyone.

Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?

My blog is pretty much done as far as features and whatnot. I’ve actually been trying to prune back the number of plugins I use, though it’s hard to resist some 1Like these pop-up footnotes, for example. I do occasionally tweak the layout and design of the blog and assorted elements and will continue to do so. I need a new logo as of writing this (June 2026) but haven’t had anything really speak to me yet.

Running in a dream

As sung by Tom Petty (RIP).

Last night I dreamed that I was jogging along this lovely mountain trail. The sky was clear, but it wasn’t hot out. I had views that were nice, but not vertigo-inducing, of a bluff above, of alpine forest and a wide, flat valley below, where a lush savannah lay. Above the trail were a series of boulders that seemed to be shaped, possibly human-made. I remember clambering up to see what it was all about and recall water, so maybe some kind of reservoir? The dream was being a tease on this part.

In the savannah, I saw a hippo. Why a hippo, only my brain can say, and it ain’t talking. The hippo was the size of a house. There was also a house-sized chicken, though its proximity to the giant hippo was unclear. There might have been more chickens.

The bluff above made me think of the one in The Lion King, arching up to the sky, except instead of anthropomorphic lions capering about, there was a herd of giraffe gathering. I could see several of them hunkering down in a way that suggested they were getting ready to leap off the bluff, not like lemmings to their doom, but because they could fly. Of course.

This was a dream about my recovery from surgery.