Tag: ha ha

My new optical capabilities

sarah

On the way home from Idaho this summer, Galen and I stopped in Vancouver and got ramen at Kintaro, at Denman and Robson. I remember taking a photo of the business sign across the street, but the Lomo ate that picture and I had forgotten what was so great about the sign.

We had ramen at Kintaro again this weekend, and holy shit that sign across the street was something. Laund’rays laundry and tanning, for your pleasure:

Laund'rays sign in Vancouver.

At first I only twigged to the awesome name, so the note about tanning is kind of behind a tree. Still good.

This was the first time I’ve taken my new Christmas camera out of the house. I like the way I bonded with it right away, developed that sensory possessiveness where something feels wrong if it isn’t in my pocket. I’m not usually a gadget person (I actually don’t have any other portable electronics). Usually I’m bonded to some giant hunk of paper or textile when I’m out and about, but adding this camera to my body was eeeeasy. So tiny, and quick. Thanks, Mum and Dad.

Monster babies

sarah

Last weekend I hung out and watched bird documentaries with some buddies (good idea, Anya!).

My favourite part was how each of us apparently had a favourite bird fact, and each of these facts featured in the documentary.

Rebecca’s highlight was the breeding habits of cuckoos. In case you never took a biology overview in University, a cuckoo lays a single egg in another bird’s nest (hence the term cuckolded), and when the baby cuckoo hatches it pushes the other eggs out of the nest.

Most parasitic cuckoos lay their eggs in the nests of smaller birds, so a cuckoo baby grows to monstrous proportions— sometimes bigger than its fake parents or even the nest— and drives its surrogate mother crazy with incessant food requests. The cry of the baby cuckoo sounds like a whole nest full of normal baby birds. Just imagine that for a second: a huge baby that sounds like 10 babies. That’s like something that got edited out of Alice in Wonderland for being too scary.

Among the million things I like, I like monster babies, and really any sort of monster reproduction. Monster sex, monster pregnancy, monster birth, monster mate-wars, monster parenting. I think what I like is complicating love with grotesque evil.

This is all a very long introduction to some comics by Natalie Dee, who I think might be even more into monster sex and evil babies than I am:

Penguin romance will not be silenced

sarah

The original French version of March of the Penguins puts words in the penguins’ mouths, for an anthropomorphic romance. At first I agreed with the producers that such a sentimental approach would never fly in North America, but then I took my gramma to see it in the theatre.

The whole crowd was old people and little kids: two groups who tend to talk through movies.

I think the French version could be reconstructed from the voices that the little girl next to me improvised to her mother.

(baby voice) ‘Oh, I’m so happy to see my daddy. Hello daddy!’

(deep voice) ‘Hello son! I missed you so much!’

And my favourite,

(mom voice) ‘Here, eat this. (barfing noises)’