Category: Animals

Ten Things We Saw At The Fair

  • August 31, 2019

We went to the Columbia County Fair today. We saw many things! Here’s a selection…

The rabbits were very cute; there were big ones and small ones and two mums with babies. I’d say there were about two dozen in total and many of them seemed to be owned by the same person!

Fairs always seem to have scarecrow contests and this year one of the entries was Grease themed. Danny seems to have fallen over…

There was a crafting pavilion with a lot of olde-timey crafts being demonstrated including a blacksmith, basketweaver and feltmaker. The turned-wooden bowls were beautiful but very expensive.

You’ve seen many photos of sheep-in-clothing before on this blog and as usual I was charmed by them again. We glimpsed one of these guys sans cape being groomed and his fur was ultra short and soft (and clean)!

This giant pumpkin was conveniently shaped like a chair, but I very much doubt they wanted anyone to sit on it!

Over on the midway they had the usual array of beautifully engineered rides (none of which I rode), including a short mini rollercoaster with spinning cars.

The sideshow games were staffed by the usual frightening carnies and featured a dazzling selection of desirable prizes…

Unusually – and the first time we’d seen this – they also had a section of coin-pushers using real quarters that paid out cash?!? Isn’t this illegal? I put exactly one quarter in and actually did knock some coins down but they didn’t come out the hopper so there were shenanigans going on!

This was my animal of the show: an inky black and supremely handsome rooster! KLS said his eyes had a ‘spark of intelligence’ 🙂

And just before we left she treated herself to a chocolate-mint milkshake. At this point I was overrun with exhaustion, possibly from heat? Maybe I should have eaten something.

Overall a fun time, as fairs always are. I think we’ll visit one more this season..

Ocean Apes

  • July 26, 2019

It was our wedding anniversary the other day, and naturally I purchased KLS a gift. To be specific, this:

Just add water for beloved pets! Of course we’ve done these before (and maybe you have too since I’ve given some as gifts) but it’s been many years. But who can resist their own aquatic humanoid shrimpy friends?

Instructions were read:

Water added:

And waiting began:

Now we – and probably you – know that ‘sea monkeys’ are just a form of brine shrimp, and the first packet (the purifier) contains the actual (water activated) eggs with subsequent packets – including the one labeled as eggs – being just food for the little guys. So it wasn’t surprising when only one day after we added the supposed egg packet we saw our first pets!

They are shy and difficult to photograph, but I succeeded more or less in capturing images of two of the half dozen or so that have already joined our family. So with pomp and ceremony let me introduce:

That little guy (circled in red) is Emperor Titanus, aka first-among-monkeys. As the firstborn he is naturally the undisputed leader, and his reign has started off well although his fuse is short and I worry he tends toward authoritarianism. Luckily his more primal urges are kept in check by:

High-Ambassador Alkarab. Third-born he may have been, but he quickly established a seat next to the emperor and attends to matters of state whilst keeping the masses distracted. As his name suggests it seems his true loyalty rests with another colony somewhere, and I fear this distraction coupled with his many day-to-day obligations may make it hard for him to resist the machinations of the unnamed second-born who hides in the depths, whispering madly.

The colony increases daily, with the monkeys simultaneously growing in size. We’re on the edge of our seat watching the politics evolve, and waiting to see if the rumors of a prophet emerging from the proletariat come to pass.

Stay tuned…

Review: Aquaman

  • December 31, 2018

I went and saw Aquaman yesterday, at an impressively early 9:30 am screening. I momentarily baulked at the ticket price…

But then remembered that the film was going to be awesome and couldn’t throw my cash at the attendant fast enough!

The cinema was crazy big. I dutifully sat in my assigned seat (N-16) and when the projector started I was the only person in there! But then I noticed the first half hour or so were just adverts (including many social engineering PSA’s: exercise more, don’t stay in the sun, start a savings account, etc.) and sure enough the locals knowledgeable about such things shuffled in just before the main show.

Aquaman is about a fish-powered dude that fights a lot and seems to wish he was actually a professional wrestler. I’m not going to spoil the overall plot here but I’ll say it starts off strong and within minutes I was intrigued:

Aquaman’s powers are a cross between Superman and Yoda and are frankly absurd (why is he bulletproof?!?) but you won’t question them because after the crazy start the film quickly evolves into madness and then ascends into bonkers territory.

This was my face during the political scene between the aryan riding the zeuglodon and the Viking riding the dragon:

And then when they introduced a pretty redhead fish girl and the film briefly stopped being about fish and became Indiana Jones meets Jurassic Park I was slackjawed.

This was my face when the murlocs (from World of Warcraft) turned up:

But it wasn’t even close to done! When a futuristic city sequence that makes Blade Runner look like the scribblings of a child was followed by a space battle that featured not one, not 1000, not 1000000, but every fish I was just roaring at the screen with joy:

There’s much to love about the film. Its visuals and design are astonishing, its script unfettered by tradition, its actors unconstrained by expectation and it’s easily got the best depiction of cetacean armies fighting a billion crabs that have ever been printed to celluloid.

It makes you feel every emotion, from love to hate to glee and yes, to terror. It’s unfettered fun, and easily gets my highest recommendation. Best fish war film ever by a mile.

Immediately afterwards I languidly strolled over to the Game Center and found a coin-pusher machine:

I was so full of DC comics appreciation I had to win a card, and quickly targeted this Batman that was right at the edge:

As you can see it was about to drop! So close in fact that a shift of only one atom would have caused it to fall…

…

…it only cost me $25 to ‘win’ it 🙂

  • Posted in Animals
  • Robert