April 02, 2008

Cruel to be kind

OK, it's official— I heard spring peepers as I was walking home from the train station today. Also sighted a scrawny-looking chipmunk, a plump, red robin approximately the size (and shape) of a softball, and a chickadee enlarging a hollow (nesting cavity?) while another chickadee looked on. And the crocuses are really up now.

Also, it's a lot easier to see everything that's coming up green in the yard now, since Felicia (our awesome garden pixie) came over today and did "spring cleaning".

Posted by rv at 06:51 PM | Comments (0)

February 21, 2008

Dashboard confessional

I'll see your Dashboard Ganesha, and raise you a Plastic Vishnu:

Plastic Vishnu, plastic Vishnu
Riding on the dashboard of my car:
Ride with me and you'll be safer,
You needn't bother with any wafer
Bow to Plastic Vishnu, in my car…

If I run over little old ladies
And the police think I might have rabies
They'll never find my hashish, though they ask;
plastic Vishnu shelters me,
For His head comes off, you see—
He's hollow, and I use Him for my stash…
Posted by rv at 01:00 PM | Comments (0)

February 12, 2008

More on Toynbee tiles

Found a few other sources of info, besides the Wikipedia entry that I linked to earlier:

  • bOING bOING covered the topic way back in 2003.
  • flickr has lots and lots of pix tagged "toynbee". In fact, someone snapped a photo of the same tile that I happened across.
  • There is a movie about the phenomenon, Resurrect Dead, but I can't determine if it has been released yet. The message board is quite active— lots of Philly sightings, new tiles, and theorizing.
  • toynbee.net was a Toynbee tile resource; now defunct.

Posted by rv at 11:12 PM | Comments (1)

August 26, 2005

J-pop Extravaganza (follow-up)

Slightly better background info on Puffy Ami Yumi.

Posted by rv at 12:48 PM | Comments (0)

August 14, 2005

I can't imagine.

27-year-old competitive eating champ, Takeru Kobayashi, downs 100 cha siu bao in 12 minutes. (This is the same fellow who ate 83 vegetarian dumplings in 8 minutes on Saturday.) Slightly more detailed coverage from The Standard.

Kumi Sugahara, a Japanese Hong Kong resident, said Kobayashi is her idol. ``He has been a long-time champion in Japan. He is a star!'' she said.
Posted by rv at 05:32 PM | Comments (1)

February 28, 2005

Cephalopods 'R' Us

Some time ago, Boing Boing reported that the squid biomass had exceeded the human biomass. After a report of jumbo squid washing ashore in California, I posted a popplers entry entitled, Next up, a rain of frogs, wherein I made the Kent Brockman-inspired comment, "I, for one, welcome our new squid overlords." Well, so did everyone else. A quick Google search on the phrase welcome squid.overlord returns almost 1800 hits. And Mule Design has made a t-shirt.

Posted by rv at 10:41 PM | Comments (1)