moose?

Saw this one at the Market on the 26th. Somehow I thought they'd be bigger and less, well, plant-ridden.

d

concerning pampers

So first things first, before anyone jumps to any conclusions involving girlfriends or babies, rest assured, I have neither.

Apparently, and unbeknownst to myself and friend James, it's tradition in Newfoundland to have a Pampers Party. As far as I can tell and remember, the main features of the Pampers Party is a bunch of guys bringing Pampers and beer. I also brought potato salad.

d

whales? moose?

So last weekend (and by last weekend I really mean about three weeks ago in Devo-time — don't ask, I'm not really sure how it works either), a friend and I went out to Cape Spear on a whim. It was a nice evening and Cape Spear is always a fun place to visit.

We had barely parked the car when I noticed whales! Apparently just after the ice bergs roll through the capelin come down followed by a feeding frenzy of whales. Just off the coast were about four of them, including the guy above. He was pretty far out but the biggest show-off of the bunch.

It's a bit of a UFO-esque photo with the grain and slight blurriness, so I had a friend, Graeme create an artist rendering that clearly illustrates, well, you can see for yourself:



I think this gives a good idea of what the whale looks like and where all the bloody moose are! People keep telling me they're in the province, but I have yet to see one. Clearly, this is the only possible explanation. I mean, who wouldn't take a whale for a little joy-ride through a feeding frenzy?

-d

PS - I'm not crazy.

sidetracked

The more I've been getting into natural food, making everything from scratch and more into nature, I've noticed a few things. This also comes about from watching far too much Survivorman (amazing show, I'd recommend it to most people — thanks for showing it to me Dave).

At some point, our evolution got sidetracked. And I'm not even saying this just because my nickname is "devo" whose name comes from their own concept of "de-evolution" as seen in the "dysfunction and herd mentality of American Society". You can read more about that here.

So, about the sidetracked evolution. Take the average person and drop them into a survival situation. Or even show people random plants and ask them which are safe and which will kill you. Most people, including myself, have no idea. At some point we must have known instinctively which plants were safe and what weren't. But, through the spread of supermarkets and the gradual death of growing your own food, we lost this ability. And that's pretty sad. Apparently we're the only species that needs to be taught what to eat.
For example, I own a diffenbacchia plant that successfully survived a repotting last Saturday. Turns out this is one of the most widely common and poisonous houseplants around. Now I didn't have plans of eating this plant (I have a hot pepper, oregano and a basil plant for that), but had I of tried it, I'd probably be dead. It's that poisonous apparently.

Conversely, most people given, say, a drinking cup will know by the weight if it's good quality and will last or not. If there's a decent amount of weight, it's probably glass and not cheap, overly manufactured plastic from the dollar store.

Have we really evolved a higher sense of consumerism than survival away from a grocery store? When the zombie uprising happens, we're all doomed.

-d

teaser

Just over a week ago John and I finally managed to have some time to get together and start in on the bookcase. Most of the cutting is done with some beveling of the edges, assembly, sanding and a couple coats of varnish being all that's left.

This is one of the pieces of the bookcase quickly taped together just to make sure all the angles were working. The tools weren't quite up to the task so it took a bit of finagling to get all the cuts made. In the end, we actually had to get the twenty-four inch pieces cut at Kent's. More on all this later.