My endorsed social media alternative

This post is about Mastodon. I've been on it since December 2022. I think it's a good choice for social media and I hope that more of my friends will go there.

The pluses for me:

• No ads
• No vitriol
• Interesting "Toots" (other sites would call these "tweets", "postings" or something else) from people in Ottawa, science fiction and fantasy writers I like, and others including my city councillor
  
• Comments on health, climate and politics that are sane and based on reality
• Open support of trans and queer people, people with disabilities, people of colour, and everyone who is increasingly facing hate on the corporate platforms
  
• I see all the toots from the people I follow, not just the ones that an opaque algorithm chooses for me
• I'm a desktop guy and there's a desktop site Phanpy that I find entirely acceptable for keeping up with people's Toots.
  

The cons for me:

• Most of my friends are still on the corporate platforms that are already enshittified or will eventually become enshittified (and sorry, but I agree with Cory Doctorow that there is nothing preventing Bluesky from going bad)
  
• It's been a bit complicated (but it's getting better all the time) 
  

Why Mastodon is better than the corporate platforms

Unlike X, Facebook, Threads, Bluesky, Twitter, Instagram and all the others, Mastodon is not controlled by a single corporation trying to make money off the people who use it. It is driven by many "servers" or "instances" that are each owned by different individuals or organizations. The servers are linked or "federated" in something people call the "fediverse".

Each instance is moderated by its owner. And the owner can block instances that are allowing hateful stuff to go through.

So, you do have to choose a good instance.

But, here's the thing, if your instance goes bad, you just move to another instance and you take all of the people who follow you and who you follow with you. Easily. It's not like when you leave X or Facebook and you lose your connections with everyone.

Some possibly useful links

• Me at Ottawa.place: https://ottawa.place/@dscrimshaw
  
• Phanpy - the reader site I use several times a day: https://phanpy.social/#/
  
• A guide site I follow with useful tips: https://fedi.tips/

Apps

I'm an Android guy, so have no advice for Apple people. And I use my desktop not my phone to keep up with Mastodon. Still I have two apps loaded on my phone.

• Tusky has a reputation for being nice for reading
  
• Mastodon sends me notifications when one of my toots gets liked, boosted or replied to, or when someone new follows me, and I can quickly check for new toots when something is going on in the world (which wasn't really a good thing for me at 4am on November 6, 2024)

Intro Video

If you're still curious, you might find this 3-minute video to be of interest:

Hipster Travel Kit 2.0

Remember the Hipster Travel Kit? Zander is about to be off on a big trip, so I thought I should put one together for him. But Zander will want to travel light and I'm sure he's already got a bandana or two. So I came up with a new trimmed down model.

The Hipster Travel Kit 2.0 Contents:

• Large pill bottle with water proof and child proof cap;
• 2m of Gorrilla brand duct tape wrapped around the bottle;
• Loop of elastic cord: clothesline, fastener;
• Tea candle and half a match book;
• Earphones with convertible plug for airplanes and regular use;
• Ear plugs: for sleeping in noisy places and protecting your hearing in clubs and at concerts; and

External to kit:

• Binder clips; and
• A microfiber towel (did you know that many European hotels do not have washcloths in their bathrooms?)

Purge toxins, learn about happiness, see something cute

One-day depot for household hazardous waste May 3

Get rid of household hazardous waste including energy efficient light bulbs, turpentine, aerosol containers, fire extinguishers, pool chemicals, insecticides, stains, wood preservatives, barbecue starters, propane tanks, oven cleaners, disinfectants, herbicides, fungicides, furniture stripper, gasoline and window cleaner. May 3, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Parking lot between 405 Rochester Street and 550 Booth Street (just south of the Queensway)

Daniel Gilbert on Happiness

"People who are clinically depressed often seem to lack the ability to reframe events. That suggests that if the rest of us didn’t have this, we might be depressed as well. "

"Another thing we know from studies is that people tend to take more pleasure in experiences than in things. So if you have “x” amount of dollars to spend on a vacation or a good meal or movies, it will get you more happiness than a durable good or an object. One reason for this is that experiences tend to be shared with other people and objects usually aren’t. "

Cute story for the week: Pierre's Penguin (Wet)suit

Pierre was too cold to swim so they made him a wetsuit.

A few things

(1) I'm a big believer in criminal sentences that keep people out of jails. So, I am not into the latest campaign that makes it seem like people sentenced to staying in their homes are not being punished.

But I have to admit, when I walked past the parking for the Provincial Court House and saw this, I thought it a bit inappropriate to replace the old paddy wagon with a vintage Corvette. Even if it is orange.

(2) Our young friend Kay just blogged a bike repair adventure. [2023 edit: no longer online] She blows my mind because (a) all that work to repair the bike; and then (b) she does such a detailed blog posting. It makes me tired to think about it. Kaye spares no expense to tell a story.

(3) I've posted photos from Saturday night's Ball and Chain honky tonk gig at the Elmdale. I'm glad I sat up in front of the pedal steel player, Al Bragg. Because (a) he was great, and (b) I could see the set list. When it came time to play the Lover's Waltz, Michael said "Let's Skip this One."

"No," I called out, "don't!" and for a change, they listened to me.

Isn't it strange how certain melodies played in the right way can make you cry every time you hear them? Even when there are no words that go with the tune? If I had stayed in cognitive science, maybe I would have tried to research why that is.

Meanwhile back on the internet

Stuff is happening here at the laboratory, but I'm not quite ready to report on any of it.

Some of you might like to look at:

• Alex Levinton's The 5 Most Horrifying Bugs in the World: Includes a "three-inch acid-shooting hornet"
• The Onion reports on a fellow who read an entire book: "Yes, the whole thing."
• Do you like squirrels? If so, the news that they are tricky will probably make you like them more. Do you hate squirrels? Now you can add "liar" to the names you call them.
• Researchers at Yale have developed a cocaine vaccine: " The vaccine, TA-CD, is designed to generate drug-specific antibodies, which bind to cocaine and prevent it from traveling to the brain from the bloodstream. This neutralizes its psychoactive effect." This sounds great, you say. But, I ask, what happens when researchers at Brigham Young University decide to use the same technology to create vaccines for chocolate and caffeine?
• Remember when you were young and you were inspired by stories of other young people who wrote books, started businesses, saved lives, etc.? I now hate those stories and instead look for ones like this one about David Morris. He played Grandpa George in the 2005 version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It was his second role after making his acting debut at the age of 79.

I can't think of anything to blog about

So I'll just pass you on to a positive rant from Kevin Kelly. Scroll down to the long version.

Okay, here at least is a picture. It's the pride of Bobcats that hang out at Catherine and Bronson when it's not snowing.

And seriously, read the Kevin Kelly piece. You'll be letting me be nice to you if you do.

A Round-Up of Noteworthy Items

We're Black and We're Proud

Did you know that in the southern US, a new term used to surreptitiously refer to African Americans by non-African Americans is "Canadian" as in:

...a subversively good defense by Matt Hennessey that had some Canadians on the jury feeling sorry for the defendant . . . .

The funny thing is that we know about this because a non-African American prosecutor put this in an email because she thought it was possible there'd be some Canadians on a Harris County, Texas jury and Canadians are known for their leniency in criminal matters. [A CBC story.]

News from the Front

Scientific American has compiled a useful page that demonstrates how much closer 2007 brought us to the upcoming robot rebellion. Will you be ready?

Snow, Christmas - Suck it Up

I just love creating these Flickr slideshows. Here is a slide show of pictures I took on my drive home in the snow on Tuesday. It ends on the Queensway because the camera battery died. Not because of an accident or anything.

The title of this post comes from a Rick Mercer rant about people getting worked up about winter weather. [go toSeason 5, Episode 9, Mercer: Rick's Rant]
Meanwhile, my friend Agatha is concerned about Christmas stress. I am much to polite to say "just suck it up and put on a toque" to Aggie, so instead I have two websites to refer her to.
The first is the Canadian Health Network's Managing Holiday Stress. They have excellent advice like:

Share your vision and delegate, delegate, delegate. Get input from family and then nail down who's responsible for what. This will alleviate uncertainty, one of the things that drives stress universally. Make it clear to your husband, for instance, that one of his jobs this year is to pick up the gift to send to relatives in Newfoundland. Then forget about it.

[The CHN is an excellent resource for Canadians that is on the Tory chopping block. It's not as sexy an issue as Copyright reform, but if you want to find out more, read this Globe and Mail article and check out the comments.]
But I have something for you that is even more helpful than the CHN advice. It is Easy Fixes for 8 Common Kitchen Mishaps from Real Simple. You may already be familiar with my advice for kitchen mishaps: Give it a new name. They go beyond this and tell you how to make a disaster look and taste like delicious food. Some of it sounds so good that I want to deliberately make the mistakes they address. Example:

Oven-Dry Tasteless Tomatoes for More Flavor
Problem: Those out-of-season but enticingly red tomatoes that you couldn’t resist buying taste insipid.
Solution: Intensify the flavor by removing moisture, food scientist Shirley O. Corriher says. Place the tomatoes on a foil-lined baking sheet and sprinkle with salt and, if desired, fresh herbs. Roast in a 200° F oven for about 2 hours. (Large tomatoes should be cut into several thick slices, Romas should be halved lengthwise or thickly sliced crosswise, and cherry or grape tomatoes should be left whole.) Before serving, drizzle with olive oil.

[p.s. Ninja text shoutout to Kaye.]

Tricking Out The Bike: My Dream Trailer

That's a mighty nice trailer, I thought when I saw this fella on Elgin Street a couple weeks ago.

But when I make my bike trailer, I'm not going to need a wheel barrow because my trailer will convert to a barrow.

Bonus Link: Tricked-out Bikes on Flickr

Uses for Binder Clips - In the Kitchen

Uses for Binder Clips - Swedish for Broken by Megan.

Megan's Ikea dishrack started to go on her and she fixed it with what looks to me like a 1.5" binder clip.

She didn't mention this on her blog, but I think the handles on the clip could hold a few forks and spoons.

Some Highlights of the Billy Bragg Show

1. His imitation of the hamster on Youtube eating a biscuit bigger than he is. (I couldn't find this one, let me know if you know it.)
2. His imitation of the talking cats on Youtube. (They are just as creepy as he said they are.)
3. Telling us that he's become a renaissance (pronounced reh-nay'-sonce) man now because he's written a book. So now he's all literary and has conversations about litrachure. "... but you don't want it to go too far. You get literary and intellectual and the next thing you're running for the leadership of the Liberal party."
4. Somehow he went into a story about pheromones and billy goats. "They piss on their faces.... It's true, I'm not making this up." For various reasons, this comes up again and again during the evening. Eventually he told us to look it up on Google "when you go home and put it in your blogs for all of your sad fucking mates...."

   [Apparently it's true: As bucks mature and go into rut, the male equivalent of heat (in the Fall), they will start peeing on their front legs and faces. They have a kind of "spray attachment" on the penis and can really spray. He will spray his urine into his mouth and then curl up his lip to get a good whiff. His legs, face and beard will eventually be coated with a sticky layer of urine (irresistible to a doe). Once rut is over (in the Winter) he may, or may not, stop peeing on himself.]

5. His music was also terrific. One of the best concerts I've been to. You can listen to some of his songs on his Myspace page

15 Ways I've Tricked Out This Blogspot Beta Blog

This post is about the design choices I've made with my blog and some of the bells and whistles I've added. I welcome any comments you have on aspects you like, or changes you'd recommend.

I've put a fair amount of research into all of this and I hope it will save someone else some effort.

1. A Simple Template: I chose Douglas Bowman's Minima template as my starting point not because it's the first choice Blogspot offered, but because it is the least flashy. Black letters on white background, no illustrations. I want my blog to be easy to read, it doesn't have to impress people with my good taste in colours.
2. A Serif Font for text: Back when I started doing Scribbles, I asked Joel, who'd been editing a newspaper, what fonts I should use. He told me that the common wisdon is that you should use a serif font for text and a sans-serif font for headlines. I've done that ever since. With all the onscreen reading I've done in the last few years, I believe that I find it less tiring on my eyes to have the little curlicues on the letters. However, Alex Poole (a human computer interaction expert) has done a detailed literature review and concluded that sans-serif fonts are as easy to read and may be easier on a computer screen.It could be about what we're used to, and I'm used to culicues. I'm open to changing to Trebuchet or Arial if I get a popular outcry.
3. A big scaleable font: To allow a reader to change the font-size on their screen before my upgrade, I had to change all my default font-sizes from "px" based to "em" based. This is now the default that comes with the Minima template and I hope Blogger has done it with the other templates as well. When I go to a site that purports to give web design advice and it has tiny text that won't get bigger, I usually decide their advice may be uninformed.

"Erase non-data ink, within reason." - Edward R. Tufte

4. No Picture Frames: In the early days of my career as a data analysis consultant, I read Edward R. Tufte's The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. It's considered by many to be the best book written on statistical graphics. He has a chapter devoted to the principle that graphics are better when more ink is devoted to data and less ink is devoted to useless information. In my data presentation days, it meant whenever I made a graph with Lotus or Excel, I'd have to spend a few minutes removing all the boxes, shading and gridlines that distracted the viewers eye from the data I wanted them to see and understand. For websites, a reader doesn't need lines around pictures, columns or text boxes to see where they are. To eliminate borders in blogger beta, I set the "border color" to white, which is the background colour, in "Fonts and Colors" [Tufte has a website. I'll have to check it out.]
5. Percentage Columns: The Minima template was set with a fixed width of 800px for the outer wrapper; and something like 500px for the main content column, and 300px for the sidebar. These are excellent dimensions for people using an 800x600 monitor. Most people who come here now have bigger monitors. In the "edit HTML" window of the template, I changed the width of the outer wrapper to 95% (width: 95%;), the main wrapper to 68%, and the sidebar to 28%. When I put pictures in the sidebar, I often set their width to 95% without specifying the height so that the pictures will automatically fit in. If my doing this makes the columns wider than you like, you can make your browser window narrow.
6. Blue and Purple for links: I use blue for new links and purple for links readers haven't followed because they go well with the black text and they are fairly standard so people will hopefully know what they mean.
7. No new browser windows: When I started blogging, I'd make every link open a new browser window by putting target="blank" in the HTML. I did it because I wanted to keep my readers here if they clicked on a link. I've found out since then that there are people out there who consider my forcing them to open a new browser window to be a fundamental violation of their human right to choose how they use their computers and the web. So I took out all my blank targets and now I don't have to spend the effort putting them in. Hopefully you know how to open a link in a new window or a new tab if that is what you woul like to do.
8. RSS through Feedburner: I could just provide the Blogger links to my posting feed and comment feeds, but it was easy to follow the Feedburner instructions and provide links that make it much easier for a reader to add the feed to their favourite RSS reader, or to subscribe by email. The Feedburner feed also also allowed me to put recent comments in a sidebar widget which the blogspot feed wouldn't. As I'm typing this, the sidebar has comments that were recent about a year ago. I'm hoping that's just because of yesterday's republishing when I switched over.
9. Google Calendar: I got a Google Calendar because I wanted to put information about events into a format that lets a reader add it to their calendar or have a reminder sent. Google Calendar does this, and I imagine other calendars do also. I look forward to the day when a single format wins. For now I'm going with the big G. If Yahoo, MS Outlook, or someone else wins, I'll switch. Once I had the calendar, it seemed like I might as well add it to my sidebar and keep it up to date with lesser-known Ottawa events that I think just about anyone would enjoy.
10. Picture Divider: It is very difficult to use blogger to create a post that has images next to text and have only the text you want next to a specific image. I get around this by inserting a divider between text I want to separate. The divider is an image that is the width of the column, the color of the background and 1px high. Here is the HTML for it:

    <img style="MARGIN: 0px; WIDTH: 100%; HEIGHT: 1px; border: 0" alt="divider" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1963/1465/320/whiteline.jpg" />

    [Site that gave me the code so I could display this HTML for you.]

11. Pullquotes: Pullquotes are the blocks of text like the one above about erase non-data ink or the one I'm about to put here that will excerpt

    "Pullquotes... can bring a reader back into your text..."

    from this sentence: "Pullquotes visually break up blocks of text when you have no images and they can bring a reader back into your text when they are skimming." I found instructions in several places for using CSS to make pullquotes easy. Then I spent hours and hours failing to make those instructions work. I don't know if it's Blogger or IE6 or both, but the CSS version never worked. So now I open up my little notepad file where I keep snips of HTML (like the HTML for the picture divider) and paste it into the "Edit HTML" window where I want the pullquote to go.

<div style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; FONT-SIZE: 120%; FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 10px; WIDTH: 35%; COLOR: green"><p align="left">"Pullquotes... can bring a reader back into your text..."</p></div>

12. Visitor Stats: I use statcounter.com. It's free and it tells me which pages people are reading, the sites they are coming from and the keyword searches they are using to find me. That's all I need, even though it tells me more.
13. Creative Commons Licence: Putting a Creative Commons 2.5 licence on my pages mostly means that people can use my material if they give don't make money with it and give me credit. If they want to use my stuff without giving me credit, or they want to make money and it's not fair use or fair dealing, they have to ask my permission. If I didn't want people to use my material for noncommercial purposes, they would anyway and it wouldn't be worth my time suing them. This way, people know it's okay; they know I'd like to be credited; and they are reminded I want to be asked if they have plans that go outside what I'm licencing them to do. Added bonus: My pages show up when someone does an advanced Google Search on "only pages that are free to use or share"
14. Open Comments: I've never used any of the barriers to commenting and I've never had a problem on this blog with comment spam. There have been a few anonymous comments that had mean remarks that I deleted.
15. Categories: I was using del.icio.us as a roundabout way to put tags on my posts and categorize them. Now that blogger beta has "labels", I've switched over. Although it would be nicer if when you clicked on a "label" you got a page with only the titles and a the first sentence or two of the posting. To get the cool looking tag cloud, I used phydeaux3's code and followed the clear directions with no modifications. (Beautiful work, phydeaux3!)

Do you have any suggestions for what I could do differently?

No More Excuses

Looking at my messy house, I realized something on Friday morning. I've got no more excuses. If I'm going to have a tidy house, an organized life, and a list of projects that doesn't get infinitely long, I'm going to have to change some habits or install new ones and just get things done.

In 2002, I could procrastinate on anything with this excuse: "I'm supposed to be writing" or "I'm supposed to be figuring out what career to switch to."

In the first 8 months of 2003: "I'm working six days a week. When I'm not working, I deserve a rest and can only focus on immediate priorities."

Then it was either: "I'm in law school" or "I'm on vacation and deserve a rest."

Now, I'm working five days a week in my chosen career. It's time to figure out how the rest of my life is going to work.

Speaking of Writing...

I've always been reluctant to read good books while trying to write. I found what may be the answer to this in an essay in this year's Fiction Issue of the Atlantic Monthly. If you've read something so good that you think your writing will never match up, Francine Prose says:

The only remedy I have found is to read the work of another, though not necessarily more like your own - a difference that will remind you of how many rooms there are in the house of art.

Close Reading: Learning to write by learning to read by Francine Prose

“I need to touch a pig.”

Here is a story from Zoom that might require you to seek out other rooms in the house of art.

Cultural Anthropology at the Marina Beach

As promised, here are my field sketches from the nightclub research in Benalmadena, Spain.

The Club

The Marina Beach is across from the Burger King and down a flight of stairs. On our initial scouting of the marina area, our fieldwork team decided the beanbag chairs and the costuming of the staff would make for a more lively outing than other clubs seemed to offer.

We conducted our research over four separate visits. For our first visit, we arrived at 10:30pm on a Saturday night. Not being ready for the beanbags, we took up a position at a tall round table with bar stools that allowed us good sightlines of the outer area of the club.

The Staff

When I discovered two muscular young men with no shirts fixing their hair and donning sarongs in the washroom, I was nervous that my blue shorts and golf shirt look would prevent me from blending in when other customers arrived. It turned out that these men were in fact club staff.

After being in the club for about 30 minutes, the DJ played Madonna's latest hit. "We have to dance to this," announced our team leader, Marcie. Beverley guarded our table while Marcie and I went to the dance floor. Distracted by our gyrations it was only halfway through the song that we noticed the staff had hung a heavy rope across the entrance to the dance floor. As they hadn't asked us to stop, we continued dancing for several more songs until they began playing a hiphop number that our team leader determined was unsuitable.

We stepped over the rope and rejoined Beverley.

Because we'd been inside on the dance floor, we missed the first performance by the bar staff. All of them, both men and women had climbed onto the bars and other high surfaces and danced. At a certain point they all threw handfuls of tissue paper squares into the air that fluttered to the floor and onto our tables.

For some reason, watching some of the more athletic female staff perform caused our team leader to announce more than once that she would in future be restricting her diet. The performance of the male staff did not have this effect on any male members of the fieldwork team

The Revellers

At about midnight, the club began to fill with customers; all wearing more clothing than the staff. The female members of our team blended in perfectly with the other customers. I must report that my above-the-knee shorts and (slightly) grey hair set me apart from other male customers. Dancing on the roped-off dance floor, my "style" of dancing, filling an empty beer bottle with water, and my sketching may also have resulted in the regulars sensing an "outsider" in the club and moderating their behaviour.

The rope was removed somewhere between 12:30 and 1:00am. Perhaps during one of the big dance numbers.

Over the course of the evening, three or four parties of women wearing coordinated outfits arrived. We determined that these were "bachelorette" or "staggette" parties. On our second visit to the club, I interviewed some young women who had attended teachers training college together in Birmingham. They reported that it had become big business in Britain for tour companies to arrange trips for brides-to-be and their friends to places like the Costa del Sol. The packages included transportation, accomodations, an itinerary of clubs to go to and the coordinated outfits.

On our first night, the most striking group were all from Spain. Some wore tank tops that said "Se nos casa la pache".^{Note 1} They all wore black and white leopard spot cowboy hats and sheriff's badges with small plastic penises extending from them.

During the evening, each of the brides-to-be knelt on the bar and drank a cocktail that was tucked into the shorts of one of the male staff. This apparently symbolic ritual seemed to be highly popular with the brides companions.

The Music

While some of the team members were able to dance (after a fashion) to any of the mixture of disco, reggaetón,^{Note 2} hiphop, house and other dance music, our team leader felt it necessary to maintain high standards and only dance to the right music. In order for her to communicate to the disc jockey what sort of music would be appropriate, a junior team member loaned her a pen and provided her a 3"x5" index card from his collection.

The Team

Cultural anthropology is tiring work. Fortunately the Marina Beach provides large matresses for lounging along with the bean bag chairs which proved to be more comfortable than I recall my old 1980 beanbag chair being.

The final illustration was sketched by our intern Beverley (promoted to full-fledged anthropologist by our third visit) and coloured by junior team member Scrimshaw.

Links: Map

Photos:

• 22/07/2006 - Fiesta en Marina Beach1 2 - a night we were there
• 08/07/2006 - Sábado noche en Marina Beach 1 2

101 Things to Do in Ottawa (12 anyway)

The other day on the Hotel Miami's patio, Marcie mentioned a fellow she knew who once told her he was unhappy because his wife was going away for two months and he didn't know what he'd do. "What?" said Marcie, "I can think of a hundred and one exciting things to do in Ottawa."

"Really?," I asked, "Like what?" Marcie was taken aback, but after I insisted that she give me at least five, she gave me a full dozen exciting things to do. Here they are as I recorded them on a green index card.

1. Go to the art gallery and have lunch. It's only $1.85 -- nice homemade soup and a bun.
2. Eat breakfast on the Mayflower patio -- even on a workday.
3. Chateau Laurier patio with girlfirends, especially newly engaged ones.
4. Bay cafeteria with your mom and sister after shopping and get the roast beef special.
5. The cheap cinemas at Rideau Centre. Is it $6.75? $7.75? There won't be a crowd, but it's first-run movies.
6. That Italian shop out back of the Bay (ed.: Il Bottega) Sandwiches at the back, you've got to get there early. Yummy, yummy food!
7. Take a romantic stroll past the flower beds at Dow's Lake with all the recent immigrants. (Marcie: Is that not good enough for you? ed: Yes, but you did say 'a hundred and one'.)
8. Landmarks Lounge in the Westin. Huge screen for watching hockey games, delicious hamburgers and Caesar salads. The world's best snacks.
9. Rideau Bakery: chocolate-glazed donuts, buy them only at the bakery on Rideau.
10. Two words: Holt Renfrew
11. Have you driven to Old Chelsea and bought the brownies at the bakery? They're like the ones at the Manx, but you can't take the ones at the Manx home.
12. Okay. Finish off with the pasta special at the Manx with my friends. Where they know your order.

Marina Beach

I'm a little tired today. Cultural anthropology is a draining activity. Last night's field work took place in Benalmadena, just down the coast from Torremolinos at an establishment called Marina Beach.

I'm hoping that photos taken by the young women from Te vi fiesta from last night get posted otherwise you might not believe me that amongst all the young revellers were middle aged and elderly women accompanying a bride-to-be who were all wearing leopard spot cowboy hats, black outfits and sherrif's badges with tiny plastic penises stuck to them.

Of course, I have a sketch of one, but it will be a while before I can get it scanned.

Spanish Posters

Marcie likes to bring posters back from her trips. A good image with non-English text makes a good one for her office wall. When we went past the bullring in Seville, she was delighted to be able to buy a copy of the poster for the 2006 bullfighting season there. (I'd have bought one myself, but I don't like paying for posters, and one shouldn't really be putting money into bullfighting, right?)

Later in the afternoon, we were heading into the Christopher Columbus archives, and I spotted a choral concert poster, nice photo, Spanish text, only loosely taped to a stone wall. I carefully removed the poster from the wall. "Here's one for you, Marcie."

"Oh, no," she said. "For me a poster has to be truly beautiful before I'll put it up on the wall. But you can keep it." I held onto the thing all the way through the archives and then threw it out. If it's not beautiful enough for Marcie, it's not beautiful enough for me. Right?

Several hours later, we were back in Malaga. Outside the construction around the train station, hundreds of giant posters had just been put up. "Hey, Marcie, how about these shoes! I bet I could peel one of these off for you!"

"Are you kidding?" Marcie wrinkled her face in disgust. "I wouldn't put that on my wall"

"I would", I said. "I like those shoes and 'song of the crazy' is great. I'm going to come back tomorrow and take a picture of these posters. Then I'm going to mount it and give it to you for your birthday. And you'll have to say, 'oh, thank you, how nice'." Then we rounded the corner and there was a guy with an armful of posters.

"Those must be the posters," said Marcie, "do you want one?"

¨Well, yeah, but..."

"Come on." Marcie turned around and chased after the guy. "Señor, por favor, mon amigo, aime, oh, how do you say 'like'?..." We had a brief discussion about whether it was quiero or not, and the guy caught on that we'd like one of the posters. He peeled off two and gave them to me.

So I had one poster for me and one for someone else. And somehow, Marcie was interested in it.

"Oh, no, Marcie, this poster is too ugly for your wall. Only the most beautiful poster is good enough for you," I said. But Marcie didn't really want it. Beverly does. And she was there, so sorry, she's getting it.

But if any of you would like a free 6"x14" bullfighting poster, I can get lots of those.

Post Script: The next morning in Malaga, all the shoe posters had been covered with other concert posters. Every single one.

El Canto del Loco Links:

• Official site (warning automatically plays music)
• Wikipedia
• A Google Video
• Some samples

Seeing Famous People

It has been an exciting week for me, too exciting to blog things properly.

Zoom

On Tuesday at the Bluesfest, Janet introduced me to Zoom who was sitting (on the ground) with her. As you'd expect, Zoom was delightful and charming. She is prettier than that tightly cropped photo in her profile, but she's not as tall as I thought she'd be. (I think it's because I assume people with big dogs are also big themselves.)

I didn't stay long enough to draw a picture of her for you, and given her pseudonym and all, I think she values her anonymity.

The Tree Reading

At the Tree Reading, the famous John W MacDonald sat down beside me and introduced himself.

John was also delightful and charming (in an entirely masculine way of course). He's got big news that I don't think he's blogged about: in one month he'll have a son. [for a photo that actually looks like John click here.]

I was disappointed that I didn't get to hear him read during the open set but delighted that the guy who reads emails he writes to his sister in which he recounts details of his interactions with "lespians" ^[note1] at the Lookout is still doing his thing.

I am also delighted because John took photos of the Ottawa Voices poets. This means that you can rely on his photo of Robyn rather than my sketch.

Robyn is a hottie and she writes poems that mention things like bras and nipples. But really you should go to her next reading because her poetry is excellent.

I have to say I enjoyed Gwendolyn Guth's and Jesse Ferguson's work also, particularly because they mentioned Cornwall, Ontario in their poems. Gwendolyn explicitly mentioned the town, and Jesse wrote about speeding on Sydney Street.

Nicholas Lea was really soft-spoken and I was having too much of an ADD night to tune in.

A Bluesfest Moment with the Hackensaw Boys

On Wednesday night, before Dave T came up with the couch plan, while we were sitting in the festival chairs, the Hackensaw Boys walked out onto the MBNA stage. "I hope we're not gonna be hearin' any hillbilly music," said Dave.

This is the kind of thing that Dave says that always makes me laugh and makes Kathy A get irritated with us. ^[note2]

Then he goes, "check out the guy on the end. It's the Keith Richards of the Mandolin." I had to agree. Young, but definitely headed towards looking like Keith Richards.

Recommended Event - City of Moves

CITY OF MOVES is a series of youth mentorship dance projects targeting Ottawa east end youth with disability. The Fundraiser Sunday July 9, 2006. Bronson Centre Theatre. 7pm. Performances by: * CITY OF MOVES youth mentors (Denbeigh Bowes, Robert Chartier, Benjamin Firth, Mark Mosielski, Chris Wheeler) * Mike Essoudry, Olivier Fairfield, Linsey Wellman * Grasshoppa Dance Exchange * Steve Wint (hip hop) and DanceAbility * Dr. Lee * Lainie Towell (Sufi Girl) * Yayé Drum and Dance (and friends) * Ottawa Voices Tickets $20 To reserve in advance call SHARA WEAVER (city of moves director) @ 233-6629/240-9775. sweaver@magma.ca Or buy them at the door! Appetizers compliments of Mekong Restaurant; 637 Somerset St. West. [Why should you go? a) it's a great cause; b) it's a great opportunity to see a variety of performances that are fun and probably not like you often see.] [Google Calendar] <

Scrimshaw is hip!

One of my brother Paul's co-workers put a copy of this cartoon on his desk this morning.

This David Coverly is onto something. "Permanent" really means forever in Hell.

[Just in case you didn't know, "scrimshaw" is intricate carving on bone or ivory. Last week, I saw a scrimshaw whale tooth on Antiques Road Show that the appraiser valued at $125,000.]