Category Archives: Culture

Recipe of the Day

Posted on by

Deep-Fried Cadbury’s Easter Cream EggsCream Eggs

Someone call Nigella and Britney too: these have got to be hallucinogenically, mind-alteringly good. It’s true, they’re nothing more than cheap, filling-ringing chocolate surrounding a mass of sticky white cavity juice with an unidentifiable but still carbiferous and dentist-horrifying yellow center. Battered. And. Deep. Fried. Geniuosity! As they say, is there a better way to celebrate the death and resurrection of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, than with these sinfully tempting morsels?

Three little words: STREAMING EAGLE CAM

Posted on by

Eagle Snatch sounds dirty eh?

Update: the camera has moved here.

Nesting bald eagle streaming webcam, brought to you live by the guy in whose yard they’ve been hanging out for 14 years. And yes, there’s eggs people, there’s eggs! The feed is not without flaws, but then, it’s hanging out in the bedroom of two of the most impressive predators the world has ever seen.

Background on the Eagle Cam

Last week, the website went online as the eagles laid two eggs that are expected to hatch by the end of the month.

Retired accountant David Carrick said he has been keeping an eye on the pair of eagles in his secluded property for 14 years. But about 18 months ago – with government permission – he got an even closer look, installing a camera in the nest while the eagles were away on their annual migration.

He said the eagles noticed the enclosed camera and “pecked at it” and then got on with their lives.

Now up to two million hits a day and growing. I’m sooooooooo jealous!

Eaglewhatchoolookinat?I am reminded, as I so often am, of a story that makes Americans look bad. Yeah, I’m a bitch: I’m fine with it. My friend Christi and I were returning to Vancouver from Victoria via the Swartz Bay ferry. It had been a beautiful day: warm, clear, and windy the way it gets on Vancouver Island, with the air pummelling you as if you were just a stray plastic bag in its hands. The kind of day that makes you think, if you had just exactly the right jacket, you could become a kite, or at least an oversized flying squirrel. Okay, maybe not you. But I could, I’m real small.

So it was that kind of day. And we’d seen the typical Active Passian and Gulf Islandian and Beacon Hill Parkian and Lower Mainlandian wildlife that day, which is to say more than just a handful of raptors. So we, being no fools, scrambled onto the ferry and went straight for the windowseats; it always takes the tourists ages to figure out where to sit. They seem to think, if they bumble around long enough, a Lido Deck will materialize and Julie the perky activities director will tell them where to go. As a result, they spend a great deal of time tumbling up and down the stairs like large, squashy Pachinko balls and end up wherever gravity finally has its way with them, usually the buffet.

As Christi and I settled into our window seats, tucking our backpacks under the seats, a group of Americans passed us by, looking for places to plug in their laptops. A nasal cry rent the air.

“Can you believe it? What was the point of this whole trip? Why did we have to leave and come here? Victoria is just like Seattle.”

At that moment, in all innocence (for once in my life) I looked out the window and said, “Oh look, a bald eagle.”

Christi replied, in a loudly incredulous voice, “ANOTHER one?”

New: Update on Eagles

Other eagle news on the raincoaster blog:

Catalina Island Eagles

Colorado Eagle Cam with three chicks

The latest on the Hornby Island eagles

The brand-spankin’ new Eagle Cam outside Swartz Bay

EVEN NEWER-ER

Peregrine Falcon Cam

Customs is your friend

Posted on by

Polar BearYou might not believe me when I say that, but Customs is your friend. Specifically, the customs agent who goes through your luggage and finds the four hundred pounds of bear meat from Canada, along with the approximately 60,000,000 worms with which it was infested.

Don't mess with Canada! We'll poison your skinny French ass! 2, 4, 6, 8, time for us to infestate!

Of course, if you knew the first thing about cooking wild game, you'd never have had the problem in the first place. The headline really should read "Don't Eat Canadian Bear Sashimi." People who don't know how to eat bear should not shoot bear, and if they do they definitely shouldn't stow it in their luggage, sneak it across the Atlantic, and invite a snotload of their soon-to-be-ex friends over for a feast.

Don't eat Canadian bears: French health officials 

[and yeah, you can read an invisible "or" in there too if you're feeling mean]

PARIS, April 3, 2006 (AFP) – France's health watchdogs have issued an unusual warning about bear meat, citing the case of French hunters who shot a bear in Canada, ate the meat and then fell violently sick with a parasitic disease…The bulletin warned hunters against "the common mistake of thinking that meat that comes from animals which have been hunted in the wild is always healthy."
 
Those who ate fully-cooked portions of meat suffered no ill-effects, but those who had even a mouthful of portions that were rare fell ill. The meat was found to be crawling with the worms — the average was 295 larvae per gramme.

It is, of course, still permissable and even on occasion encouraged, to eat Canadians. But ask nicely first.

Post #200: YouTube of the Gods

Posted on by

Jiffy SquidNietzschian monkeys hangin' in a bar, picking up chicks. This is why ARPANET developed opposable thumbs and the ability to stand upright: specifically so that one day it would be mighty enough to post this link. Bonus Squiddy goodness.

Jiffy Squid

Some days it’s not worth chewing through the straps

Posted on by

Boris in Chains

It appears there are some people who are having an even worse week than me, and I've just been given my ninth (or is it tenth) eviction notice from the Co-op. They're not being very cooperative, I must say. But enough about my week.

As I said, looks like some people are having an even shittier week than me although it is certainly true that if the gutter press were as guttacious as they've been made out to be they'd be camped out on the front lawn oh yeah, they don't have those things in Islington, the front uh stoop? begging for a quote from the children and bribing the household pets with bacon bits.

It is therefore in the spirit of taking up arms against weeks which are both shitaceous and whoreanus that I present the following mindless Internet game. It should cheer at least one person up to know that Boris Johnson has attained the rarified altitudes inhabited by the seraphim and Kevin Bacon and gotten his own game. So to speak. The associated t-shirts are pure graphic gold, icons of both t-ness and shirt-ness that should be copied for generations hence. The Ice Cream of Truth is a symbol that all but the lactose-intolerant can support (and they shouldn't have any rights anyway) and the sound effects are pure sweetness. Ladies and gentlemen:

Big Ben Boris

Vote Boris! Just because you can't