Spiders on Halloween

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We had a great time this morning at the Porters Market in Tokai, buying expensive bread, expensive juice and other expensive stuff.
The quality of the produce there is undoubtedly good, the prices are outrageously high. Still – a good time was had by all, a massive bagel was had by Kristen and a gingerbread man was had by Alex.

Coming home, we have been playing in the sun in the garden and the pool, sorting out a few chores around the house and – in my case – photographing a spider’s nest in the back garden. This one is about tennis ball sized and probably belongs to a rain spider.
Mrs 6k isn’t a big fan of spiders, but I think they’re amazing and the nests – made from leaves encompassed in a silky web sack – are incredible. I sprayed this one lightly with water so I could capture the intricate structure.

Bigger here. I guess that’s perfect timing for Halloween, but that was never my intention. It’s so bright and sunny here that Halloween darkness and creepytude seem a long way off.

You can see more of the day (and the spider’s nest) on the flickr set I stuck together really quickly just now.

From here to here…

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…to here to here.

The best thing about the internet™, if you have the time and the inclination to pursue it, is the way that one cool site can lead you to another to another. Sadly, this adventure trail all too often ends at one, but just occasionally you’ll get a decent run. Here’s one I managed earlier.

I started out at Sorry I Missed Your Party, a regular on my bloglines reader. Like many sites poking fun at others on the web, this one can be a bit hit or miss, but unlike many sites poking fun at others on the web, it’s more often hit than miss. Today’s post was Lazy Man Party Costumes from which one picture stood out for me, by virtue of just being “properly done”:

That photograph (found here) led me to this Flickr photostream, which features – amongst many other things – some amazing shots of London, where I have never lived.

Those photographs – some fun, some serious, some point and shoot, some obviously thoughtfully composed – were taken by Landon Howell – A Conservative Southerner in Seattle™, who obviously has a talent for photography and whose blog is perfect reading material for me – unrestricted and eclectic ephemera. Wonderful stuff.

Recent posts that stood out for me were WWJW, wherein a mother asks the best method of making a costume for her teenage son to attend a Halloween party dressed as Jesus.

So — what would be a good Jesus-robe (or just any plausible Jesuswear. This would be daywear, not Jesus eveningwear) that we could buy, in a nice natural fabric?

And gets a variety of answers. As you might expect from such a request.

And then the amazing story of Elena Desserich in Love Notes:

When 6-year-old Elena Desserich new she was going to die from paediatric brain cancer, she started writing notes to her younger sister Gracie so that she’d know something about her big sister after she was gone. 
What Elena’s parent’s didn’t realize was that Elena was leaving notes for them as well, and started finding them everywhere after she passed.

The full story is here. Heart-breakingly sad, but somehow incredibly positive as well.

As I said, one requires time and inclination to follow this sort meandering path through the web and at this point, I discovered that I had comprehensively run out of the former, even though I still had a whole heap of the latter in reserve.

And so this evening, I fully intend to continue from where I left off and – though this may seem ever so slightly sad – I have to say that I’m quite looking forward to it.

No Silence in the Suburbs

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I was leafing through the recycling fodder that is The Times today and found Aspasia Karras’ column:

I have a neighbour whose alarm goes off every weekend. It rings for hours without pause or reprieve. Technically, there is a pause – for like three insane seconds of pure silence, and then it starts up its hysterical whine again.

We too have exactly this problem – including the perfectly described “three insane seconds of pure silence”, which bring with them immediate relief and sudden hopeful anticipation, but are then rapidly followed by crushing reality as the noise starts up again. 
I have some wonderful video footage from my birthday braai last year with impromptu football, promptu beers and a siren soundtrack. Bastards.
The most persistent local offender seems to be triggered by the wind – perhaps blowing a door or window open – and thus in Spring (and Summer and Autumn and Winter) it is, sadly, a rather regular occurrence. In fits of rage I have gone wandering around the neighbourhood attempting to locate the source, but the inevitable wind has sided with the alarm, surrounding and teasing me.

Karras goes on to wish a faulty alarm on her neighbours who poisoned a dog in their street which had been barking too much for their liking.

We know it was her neighbours because they fed the dogs steak laced with gut-wrenching poison. The vet, who did the autopsy on the dog that succumbed, explained that your garden-variety criminals use sausage for their murderous intent. Neighbours go all upmarket with their crimes.

Having read that, I am hugely tempted to use my Opstal Wors on my neighbourhood canines. The best bit being that it probably wouldn’t need anything added to finish them off.

While my immediate neighbours don’t have dogs, we are surrounded by a wider ring of canines that happily “chat” to each other throughout the night. One barks, and then (I swear, because I have lain in bed and aurally followed it on numerous occasions) you can follow the noise right around you in a 360º arc (often called “a circle” in technical terms).

By help is on the way in the shape of the City of Cape Town Animal By-law 2009. And particularly sections 5 (e) and (f):

No person shall –

(e) keep any dog which barks for more than six minutes in any hour or more than three minutes in any half hour.

(f) keep any dog which –
(i) by barking, yelping, howling or whining;
(ii) by having acquired the habit of charging any vehicle, animals, poultry, pigeons or persons outside any premises where it is kept; or
(iii) by behaving in any other manner,
causes a disturbance or nuisance to inhabitants of the neighbourhood;

That would seem to cover every single dog in our area. Apart from the ones that I don’t know about because they don’t make unnecessary and prolonged noise. Which kind of proves the point, doesn’t it?

The by-law has just completed its second round of public comments and can’t come in quickly enough for my liking. Of course, then we’ll have to see if the council will actually act on it and enforce the restrictions therein.

But if not, there’s always Operation Wors to fall back on…

This is it

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I have been waiting for the perfect time to share this little bit of video footage with the 6000 miles… reading public.

And this is it. Because today marks the release of the Michael Jackson documentary and this is my bit of Michael Jackson tribute.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m no fan of MJ and I am more than ready for the whole thing to go away now. Which of course it won’t.
So, if you can’t beat them, join them and show the world your love of Michael. Sham on!

Which brings me to this video. Please allow me to set the scene:
It was filmed in Trafalgar Square, London UK on Sunday 5th July 2009 – 10 days after Michael popped some propofol and shortly thereafter, his clogs. A group of (mainly) middle-aged women had got together and were self-consciously dancing around a CD player which was quietly knocking out MJ hits.
Rarely have I seen a group so uncomfortable in their own skins. This was clearly the first IRL meet-up of an MJ internet forum. No-one knew anyone else and all present seemed to be disappointed with the turnout, the company, the organisation, the venue and the weather.

Until the forum loony turns up. Dressed in white crocs, cream opaque tights under white fishnets, blue polka dot shorts, a dark Union Jack top and a floppy hat, she (at least, I think it was a she) promptly demonstrated how MJ would have done things if he’d been a MJ forum loony.


MJ never did it like this

Note how the others in the group aren’t quite sure how to react. Two of them attempt to turn the loony dance into some sort of  Thriller move. It doesn’t work and they give up and try to ignore the loony.
In the end, it turned into two tributes – one with some middle-aged women shuffling around a cd player and one with a loony prancing all over Trafalgar Square. 

Just how MJ would have wanted it. But with less small children.

Enough babies already!

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I saw this letter in The Times earlier this week. It made me laugh.

I am a poor pensioner and taxpayer – I cannot afford to pay for your sexual urges.
The world and South Africa has enough people, please don’t be stupid and selfish and add more at my expense.

More people means more power stations are needed, more schools, more hospitals, more houses, more jobs (from where?), more dams, more roads, more prisons, more police, more global warming and so on, and I am expected to pay for all of this.

Think of me, yourselves, the rest of the world and the child before you make babies.

RL, by email

While RL’s plea may strike a chord with a number of  taxpayers, who (as in most other countries around the world) subsidise those “less fortunate” than themselves, I can’t see his/her message catching on. With 4.3 babies born per second worldwide, another 17.2 (ish) have arrived while you’ve been reading this sentence. Don’t tell RL – that sort of stat would kill him/her.

Of course, if RL was to pop his/her clogs, then it would – by RL’s reckoning, at least – be a good thing for the world. We’d need 0.00000001 less hospitals, 0.00000001 less power stations and dams. Schools would probably be unaffected, but there would be 1 whole house more. Which has got to be a step in the right direction. Unless you’re RL. 

However, if RL were to be cremated, that would add to global warming, so instead, we’d need more space in the local cemetery.  

Hmm. Swings and roundabouts. No – wait – that’s a playground, not a cemetery. But you know what I mean.

The problem with RL’s idea of thinking of him/her before submitting to your sexual urges is that, were one to think about a grumbling pensioner (like thinking of dead kittens or Manto Tshabalala-Msimang (remember her?)) while in the throes of passion, then the sexual urges would probably go away. Rapidly.

But then, maybe that’s RL’s plan.