random stuff

But is it art? River trail edition

The answer is no.

The question comes from this pile of garbage neatly arrayed along the river trail this morning as I was heading out for my run. I have no idea why it is there or who put it there, but the neatness of the pile suggests it may have been collected in order to be picked up and disposed of later. Maybe. Also, where all this stuff came from is another good question, since I have not observed any of it along the river trail itself. The location is right below the overpass for the #1 highway, which may–or may not–be a clue.

The splayed-out doll on top is the perfect creepy pièce de résistance, though.

How many fun/horrifying objects can you identify?

I am not going to spam 14 posts tonight

14 posts is how many I’d need to post in the next four hours in order to get my desired monthly average of 2 posts per day.

I mean, I could cheat and do it pretty easily:

  • 14 one-line posts
  • 14 posts of cat pictures (so tempting)
  • 14 posts highlighting a “best of” post from this blog, based on my own arbitrary criteria
  • 14 letters from the alphabet
  • Breaking up “The 12 Days of Christmas” and adding two brand-new things, like cows a-mooing or crows a-cawing or whatever.
  • And so on.

But I am doing none of that.

Probably.

Are moustaches coming back in style?

I kind of hope not. I’ve seen a few lately and I’m getting strong 70s vibes. This is not something I have been craving, I should note.

Also, I asked Adobe Firefly to give me “A man with a large moustache standing on a sunny sidewalk, holding a cat in his arms, laughing; horizontal orientation” and this is what it produced:

Pros:

  • There is a moustache
  • There is a cat
  • There is a sidewalk
  • It is sunny

Cons:

  • He is not really laughing
  • Is that a large moustache? I say no.
  • There is nothing horizontal about this image. Maybe I should have specified “landscape.”
  • That cat is terrifying
  • The hair is also kind of terrifying

This is today’s 16th post

As mentioned somewhere in among the flurry of today’s posts, I have this informal rule on my blog, to post once per day. I later amended this to allow me to have a day or two slip by, post-free, as long as I ended up with an average of one post per day by the last day of the month.

Since instituting this, I have posted a lot more. Is this a good thing? Sometimes! Maybe even most of the time, if only just.

Then I thought, Why not more? More more more.

So I unofficially decided to try for two posts per day. This would seem twice as hard, but it is, in fact, much harder. Also, if you start falling behind, it becomes even tougher to catch up. Kind of like if you’re halfway through National Novel Writing Month and your lack of output means you need to write 3,000 words per day for the last two weeks. You just throw your hands up in the air and surrender. Or in 2023, you get ChatGPT to write the novel for you.

Anyway, when I got up today, I realized I would not hit that two post per day average this month, as I had written 46 posts, well short of the needed 62. It meant I’d have to spew out 16 more posts in a single day to hit my goal, which I’d never done before, nor even come close to doing before.

But I did it tonight! This is the 16th post I’ve put up today and the 62nd for the month, averaging two per day. Hooray for me! I will now celebrate by going to bed.

Also, I’m never doing this again1Quite possibly a big fat lie..

Ten words that rhyme with June

It’s the end of June, I’ve lost weight, it’s been sunny, and I got sick.

So, a mixed bag.

And now ten words that rhyme with June:

  1. Spoon
  2. Moon
  3. Prune
  4. Loon
  5. Tune
  6. Rune
  7. Boon
  8. Croon
  9. Zune1According to Microsoft, this is totally a real word
  10. Dune

Now, take these ten words and use them in a story! Surprise writing prompt!

I sat by the window, listening to a tune on the radio, staring out and up at the fat moon. I used a spoon to shovel up ice cream from a bowl, directing it to my mouth. The night was silent, save for the plaintive cry of a loon. I did not want to listen to it croon its sorrowful song, so shut the window.

I picked up my Zune, which still worked all these years later, quite the boon. I played a song at random and did not like it. Why had I bought it? I would need to prune my playlist. I laid back on the bed and closed my eyes, seeing before me in the dark an image of endless sand, one giant rolling dune after another. Had I been here before, or only in a dream? I opened my eyes and reached over to the nightstand, picking up a small wooden talisman I had been given by a stranger, a burnished, dark rune, whose etchings defied explanation. I held it up before my face and turned it over.

"Soon," I whispered. "Soon."2Bonus rhyming word for extra credit

These are a few of my favourite things

In no particular order:

  • Pizza
  • The number 9 (but not the song)
  • Dark pink
  • Gum Gum People
  • New running shoes
  • Showering then going to bed with clean sheets
  • Hot chocolate on a cold winter day
  • Drinking briskly cool water from a fountain after a run in summer
  • The scent of freshly cut wood
  • Songs I never get tired of, no matter how many billions of times I listen to them
  • Re-reading something I wrote years later and coming away impressed
  • Fixing up a bad drawing
  • Improvising a zinger that is way funnier than it has any right to be (this is not a common occurence)
  • Getting lost in a great novel
  • Watching a movie where characters are smart, believable and competent
  • Happy endings
  • Dioramas. They’re just cool and spiffy.

I’ll do a sequel post on this later this year. This was all off the top of my head, so there’s going to be things I missed.

I have purchased sunscreen in April, let summer begin!

With the forecast calling for sun tomorrow (weird, I know) and expecting to spend some hours in said sun, I have purchased sunscreen because as I’ve learned, if you spend any time in the sun, it will burn you. This year, I’m ready! As long as I remember to put it on. Which I will. For sure.

Also, speaking of summer, they have already filled the swimming pool at Hume Park, even though the pool normally doesn’t open until late June. It’s not actually open now, but it looks like it could be. Maybe it’s a test run. Or maybe a family of adorable otters will live there until late June.

I’m not sure what the tent is for, but it looks somewhat festive.

A random list of things I like, April 2023 edition

Here it is, in no particular order.

  • Mechanical keyboards
  • World peace
  • Taking photos
  • Drawing
  • Writing
  • Reading (fiction or non-fiction)
  • Video games
  • Music (listening, possibly creating some day1Not quite a bucket list item, but close)
  • Singing, specifically, like Bob Dylan. I do a decent Bob Dylan.
  • Chocolate chip cookies
  • Pizza
  • Making things
  • Getting sprayed with cool water on a very hot summer day
  • Being alone with my thoughts on a run
  • Quiet places
  • Bouncy things, like trampolines
  • Battlebots2What can I say? It’s fun watching 250 pound robots tear each other apart.
  • Roller coasters
  • Bright colours
  • Baseball caps
  • The accents of YouTubers Tom Scott and Mark Brown (both British)
  • Cats3The furry creatures, not the musical
  • Other things that may come to me later