- China Gets Real
stolen from Valleywag where, surprisingly, it was not posted by Comrade Jackson
Category Archives: news
Big Dee Dee Not Home Free!
Rock? Lobster
Canadians from Port Alberni to the Bay of Fundy have been riveted by the tale of Big Dee Dee, a rare LOUS or Lobster of Unusual Size.
Indeed, at a strapping ten kilos and old enough to vote in human elections, Big Dee Dee was unquestionably the king (or queen…I didn’t look that closely, I must admit) of the ocean floor. Until s/he was caught, that is. Caught and put up for auction like a common slave. The biggest bid came from a mysteriously nameless Ontario organization and is this the right time (yes, yes it is) to tell you that my father used to make a pretty penny back in the Seventies shuttling semi-comatose lobsters from the Maritimes to Toronto on condition he not look inside more than the top case, as the coke and pot were packed in between lobsters on the lower levels.
Seafood, particularly live seafood, confuses the dogs’s noses, you see. That’s why every time you see mixed seafood on sale at T&T you can bet that Hastings is going to be wild that night; they can take a bath on the price of the seafood, as it is incidental to the profitability of the actual cargo.
Mysteriously nameless Ontario organization, but we can be pretty sure it wasn’t the Boy Scouts offering a cool five thousand for the meaty crustacean. And, indeed, they would have had their wanton way with Dee Dee, had it not been for Vancouverite and vegetarian Laura-Leah Shaw and her two anonymous Eastern backers, who made a counteroffer of $3000 and hella publicity. It looked as if the lobster were saved, that Dee Dee would once again crawl and flit in the turbid, reversable waters of The Bay of Fundy.
But it was not to be.
t’s bittersweet news for Big Dee-Dee, a 10-kilogram lobster, as the creature has avoided a butter bath on a dinner plate, but won’t be heading back to the ocean anytime soon after all.
Instead, Big Dee-Dee is destined for a coastal New Brunswick marine facility…
Breau said on Sunday that he’s decided he’ll instead be giving the lobster to the Huntsman Marine Science Centre in St. Andrews.
“I thought about it for quite a few hours but I thought it’s best for business to do it like this,” Breau said. “No bitter feelings.”
Au contraire. To those faceless, nameless Ontarians, it leaves a distinctly sour aftertaste. I hope that’s one fisherman who doesn’t end up swimming with the fishes.
Olive Riley, World’s Oldest Blogger, Goes Home
RIP Olive Riley. You found your way home.
The Unstoppable Olive Riley
Olive Riley, unofficially, but probably, the world’s oldest blogger, died on Saturday at the age of 108.
Olive videoblogged and blogged from her hostel home and recently updated everyone on her move both from her self-hosted site to Blogspot and her move from more independent living to the nursing home in the same building. In her last weeks she complained of a bad cough and distress, but remained in high spirits, giving an impromptu concert for her new roommate and friends.
You can read her last post here. An excerpt:
Penny, who’s in the next bed to mine, had a visit one day this week from her daughter, who’s a professional singer. Guess what happened! She and I sang a happy song, as I do every day, and before long we were joined by several nurses, who sang along too. It was quite a concert!
Olive’s main blog is down at the moment, no doubt due to overuse, but it is located at The Life of Riley, http://www.allaboutolive.com.au/
New Ingrid Betancourt video!
This newly-released Ingrid Betancourt footage is truly remarkable. In her own words, she explains what it was like to be a prisoner of FARC for all those years, chained in one place, able to make friends only with the vermin who scuttled through her lonely cell, and gives her thoughts on freedom and Hugo Chavez. Then she humps the backdrop.
At least, I THINK that’s what she’s saying. Like I speak Spanish!
via DListed
Patron Saint of Procrastination?
Father Adelir Antonio de Carli
There’s no question Father Adelir Antonio de Carli was a good man. There’s no question Father De Carli was a nice man.
There’s no question that Father De Carli was a dumb man.
And now, there’s no question that Father De Carli, last seen in April headed out to sea carried by a bunch of helium-filled party balloons, is a dead man.
Father De Carli (name variously reported as De Capri as well), who was trying to beat the record for staying airborne via party balloons, has been found by the crew of a tugboat, hundreds of miles out in the Atlantic, which is, in a way, poetic: he’d been trying to raise money for a spiritual rest stop for those nomads of the landmass, truckers. Unfortunately, he’d been planning to travel inland, but Nature had other plans for him.
So, why am I being so mean about a nice fellow who took on grave personal risk and ridicule in the pursuit of the service of his god and his fellow man?
Because Father De Carli did not attempt learn to operate the GPS which was to relay his coordinates to trackers on the ground until after he was airborne.
From Gizmodo:
I need to contact someone who can teach me how to operate this GPS, so I can give the latitude and longitude coordinates, which is the only way that people on the ground can know where I am.
Now, as one who has always distrusted such devices on principal, and whose experiences with them have done nothing to dissuade me of my view of them as functionless Yuppie fear-sops and technofaith fetish amulets in the shape of bricks, I must say that even had the device functioned as such devices are known to do, it would have done nothing more useful than electrocute him when he hit the water, which would probably (in brutal retrospect) have been quicker than what ultimately happened.
May Father De Carli rest in peace, and may we all learn never to take off in a lawnchair pulled by a thousand helium balloons without proper preparation.
At least a windsock!
Father De Carli is airborne!
raincoaster 