Just Make Them Die

Jesus. Here's a link to a YouTube video. I watched about 3 seconds and I want to kill people. This is horrible.

Mind the Fence

Can I just say, in advance, "OWWWWWW!"

That is all.



Brush-tailed Possum, Dee Why, Sydney, Oz, October, 2006.

Then and Now: The Photography of Irina Werning

Saw this on Roger Ebert's Twitter feed: Back to the Future:

I love old photos. I admit being a nosey photographer. As soon as I step into someone else’s house, I start sniffing for them. Most of us are fascinated by their retro look but to me, it’s imagining how people would feel and look like if they were to reenact them today... A few months ago, I decided to actually do this. So, with my camera, I started inviting people to go back to their future.

Laughing Kookaburra

Azure Kingfisher

From my trip to Australia in 2006.

Cheeky Bugger

Big bird:

Old Sayings…Reconsidered: "A Stitch in Time..."

“A stitch in time saves 9.” A wise English person first said that a long, long time ago.

“A stitch in time saves 9.”

It’s like time is this gigantic piece of fabric—and it has a hole in it. Worse: 9 is gonna fall through the hole unless it gets stitched up. Hence “A stitch in time saves 9.” You get it?

The Naked Eye

I was in science class one day when I was a kid. The teacher was teaching us about atoms. At one point he said that atoms were "invisible to the naked eye." I thought about that real hard for a long time. "Invisible to the naked eye." When when I got home I told my mom that I really wanted to see some atoms, but I couldn't because I had "naked eyes." Mom, she was so thoughtful, she went right to her sewing machine, and in no time at all she had made me some eye-clothes. Little tiny eye-pants, little eye-shirts, little eye-socks and eye-shoes. There were even little eye-hats! Before school the next morning, Mom helped me tape my eye-clothes to my face. It was so cool. I never did get to see those atoms though, because on the way to school I got hit by a truck.

You might not be able to see atoms with the naked eye, but I’m pretty sure I would have seen that truck.

How to Barbecue Cockatoo

Shrimps on the barbie is for wusses

Stupor Moon

One and just one shot of the March 2011 full moon that made many, many people dumber than usual, with ringing and witty commentary.

Feast your eyes on this brooding number, for which I chose a cottony, hazy quality I like to call "eight-seconds exposure and crop the holy hell out of it." (Click to en-huge-en.)

Brings to mind some of Rembrandt''s darker work, doesn't it? I mean if Rembrandt were a lot more dull than he actually was, and only painted while tremendously drunk, and after repeatedly bashing himself in the face with a hammer, it does—doesn't it? Hmm?

The Invasion of the Cockatoos [updtd]

So we're sitting on the veranda after a fine dinner from Christine of lamb chops and mashed pataters and salad with blue brie cheese from Tasmania and walnuts when sulphur-crested cockatoos, one at a time, began landing on the tall, gangly antenna two buildings over. Christine snapped a picture (as always, click pix to enlarge):

More and more of them landed. And they stared at us. They just stared.

I said, "Maybe they smelled the lamb chops." Just joking, you know: Cockatoos eat seeds, berries, nuts, some insects - that sort of thing.

But maybe it was true.

Christine went and got some bread, came back out to the veranda, held a piece up, and, like it was the signal they'd been waiting for, the cockatoos instantly jumped from the antenna, disappeared for a second behind the roofline you can see in that first shot, swooped back over it—and came flying all big-winged right to us and the railing of our veranda. Ho-lee shee-ite. What follows is cockatoo madness.

Profanity Warning: This video starts with "Holy crap!"