Category: Fun

The second best things in life are very expensive.

A funny thing happened on the way to the forums… That is, I was at the main WordPress.com page, and about to click over to the support forums, when I saw among the list of hot blogs of today: strange maps. It is as interesting, strange, and cartographic as I hoped.

For example, there’s a map of the most generic country ever.

The country is bounded in the south by an ocean called ‘Ocean’, which closer to land is labelled ‘Gulf’, ‘Sea’, ‘Channel’ and ‘Bay’. Several islands are named ‘Island’, except where they occur in a group, in which case they’re called ‘Group of Islands or Archipelago’.

This meltingly musical character is Snowcandle. He lives with Bubi Au Yeung.

I encountered Bubi through Drawn!, which featured a different work of hers. By the way, thanks to Johnny at Drawn! for the warning, but I didn’t find The Story of Abbey too saccharine.

Actually it’s Presidents’ Day in the US of A. The holiday is, I presume, why my feed reader has been less busy than on most Mondays.

I declare it to be t-shirt day, in that it’s time to link to a rather good post featuring 107 t-shirts for geeks that do not suck. I presume that the ambiguity as to who (the geeks?) or what (the shirts) is suck-free is deliberate.

The anonymous and Canadian //engtech provides well-chosen images, and links to the t-shirt sites whence the shirts can be purchased. He doesn’t use affiliate links. But I do! And the reason I’ve declared today to be t-shirt day is that Monday is new release day at Threadless!

Why are you still here, rather than earning me street team points… I mean, treating yourself and your loved ones to fine and well-deserved t-shirts at Threadless? Is it because you want to know about the t-shirt in this post? Yes, I like it too. Orange is my favorite color. The design is by the wonderful Ric Stultz, and it’s currently at the top of his works in print page.

It’s Chinese new year: the year of the pig. Judy’s parents are here for the new year, which we are celebrating by eating a lot. Yes, pork is very much on the menu, and no, that doesn’t mean that we’ll be eating rat a year from now.

Thanks to KnOizKi for the picture of the pig, which I believe is in Hong Kong, and is apparently still celebrating Valentine’s Day. But not everyone there is so upbeat. “The Year of the Pig will not be very peaceful,” said Hong Kong feng shui master Raymond Lo. Meanwhile, in Korea, it’s the year of the golden pig.

From Boston, a happy new year of the pig to you, wherever you are, and whatever year you were born in. (I’m a dog myself.)

Aztec Camera’s first album, High Land, Hard Rain, has long been a favorite of mine. I never saw the band live. But there they are on video from those far-off days, when Roddy Frame was 19, doing “Walk Out to Winter.”

Other relevant Roddy-related resources include:

• Killermont Street, an excellent fan site. It has extensive archives. For example, I listened yesterday to a snippet of conversation between Roddy and Neil Finn.
• The official Roddy Frame site.
• Roddy’s MySpace page.

Hey, this looks like Betsy! Actually our dog Betsy is, we think, mainly Treeing Walker Coonhound, while this is a foxhound. But the coonhound breed was originally a mix of foxhound and some stockier dog.

The image is from the Wurstminster dog show. Perhaps my favorite image from that gallery is the Vizsla. Having found, and loved, that picture, I see that the artist lives just a few miles down the road from me, in Dedham, MA. Even so, don’t tell Betsy that “her” picture is not my favorite.