Category Archives: sad

Have you had one of these days?

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I’ve had too many of them.

While it’s true that it’s been some months since I last received an installment of Gimli/Bill slash with a hopeful “Can you give me your thoughts on this?” cover note, it was part four of six, and I employ the use of a mail drop for screening purposes for damn good reason. An angry Bill/Gimli slash writer is not someone I particularly want to face at the best of times, and when I haven’t responded to the last three installments OR when I have, saying exactly what’s on my mind; well, these are not exactly the best of times.

Imagine my surprise when I found a comic which perfectly illustrated my feelings. No need to reply personally to those invariably hand-scrawled tomes; simply return to sender, with this attached.

From Monkey Fluids, via Vicus.

The editor's dilemma

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The Fortress of the Assassins, DESTROYED!

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Married To The Sea
marriedtothesea.com

The tragic destruction of the Fortress of Alamut, stronghold of the Assassins, expressed as a charming historical engraving/ironically juxtaposed caption mashup, for your viewing pleasure.

Background, from DamnInteresting:

The story of the Hashshashin, or Assassins, is cloaked in mystery, and much of the truth about them was long ago lost to war and time. Their influence, however, changed the course of history and spawned the very word we use today to describe calculated, politically-motivated murder.

The Hashshashin were formed by Hassan-i-Sabah, a follower of the Isma’ili sect of Shi’ite Islam. Hassan left his home in Cairo over a succession dispute between two heirs to the Fatimid Caliphate. After choosing the wrong heir to support, Hassan found himself escaping to Persia after spending a short period in a political prison. Determined to avenge himself upon the Fatimids while also wiping out his traditional Sunni enemies, Hassan sought and found the ideal stronghold: the fortress of Alamut, also known as “The Eagle’s Nest.” Located northwest of Tehran, just south of the Caspian Sea, Alamut was an imposing sight. Nestled atop a 2,100m mountain with only one near-vertical approach to the fortress, the Eagle’s Nest was nearly impregnable.

Nearly.

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you can never step into the same River Street twice

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Rollin' down the River Street

Behold the magnificence which is Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan’s River Street.

Often has it been said that Canadians are too literal-minded; most particularly often it has been said to my face, although there’s nothing about my face in particular or in whole which is literal-minded, and indeed quite often the parts migrate at will or vanish altogether and I’ll end up all ears, ferinstance.

Quite embarrassing, especially when they see me writing down everything they say.

But that is neither here nor there. And it’s certainly not in Moose Jaw, which is not all that far from everyone’s favorite Canadian place name: Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo-Jump.

So…have you been to Moose Jaw? Have you seen it? It’s not Paris, let me tell you. So, when the city fathers/mothers/foster parents put their heads together and wanted to do something uniquely Moose Jawian, they quite naturally phoned Germany and brought over artist Edgar Muller and his team to turn River Street into a painting of a river, reportedly the world’s largest 3-dimensional painting.

How proud they must be, eh?

So they not only paved Paradise: they gravened themselves an image of it and now walk all over it.

Truffle molestor caught brown-handed

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Hand Dipped ChocolatesIn shocking news from exotic Nottingham, we have learned that a disgruntled and highly competitive chocolatier has attacked and “inappropriately handled” the truffles of his competition.

Lynn Cunningham from Hotel Chocolat said: “It was quite extraordinary really.

“The staff observed Mr Colenso handling a number of truffles in a way that made them suspicious.

“When we checked the truffles later they had been squashed and damaged.”

She said Hotel Chocolat was told by Thorntons that Mr Colenso had “handled the truffles inappropriately“.

“We just want to move on now,” she said.

Let the healing process begin.

Remember, one should always be careful about letting one’s competitors finger one’s truffles.

Stephen and the Case of the Second Most Expensive Frisbees Ever Invented

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So Stephen (you remember Stephen?) he was once even younger, and when he was younger he was, as is the way, more junior, and he wasn’t a restaurant manager at all but instead a busboy on the Princess Something, a Canadian Pacific cruise ship/ferry crossbreed cruising between Victoria and Seattle.

And CP, they had standards. In fact, they could be said to have standards the way the SS could be said to have been strict-ish. And one of their standards was that, by the time they docked in Seattle, every piece of cutlery and every piece of china aboard would have been washed and dried to perfection, regardless of time pressures, or staff would be fired.

And it always was.

And many were the evenings, pulling into port, that Stephen spent at the stern of the ship, gleefully tossing aft the plates that they didn’t have the extra 15 minutes to wash. Puget Sound is lined with CP china and silver flatware, should you ever feel like taking a diving vacation.