Scotch that!

It's bad news when the Bartender cries

It's bad news when the Bartender cries

So yesterday I decided I’d been good (god knows why I decided that, but I can be somewhat arbitrary at times) and deserved a treat, and so I took myself to the local filling station, an agreeably-but-not-intimidatingly casual place named after a species of plant which did not, in fact, exist on the premises.

Unless it was hiding, and after what happened, who could blame it?

The waitress was attentive, and sweet, and barely old enough to be out that late on a school night. She asked me what I would like to drink, and I thought about what not-too-exotic-but-still-tasty items might be available in the subarctic regions and said, “Do you have Johnny Walker Black?”

She looked at me with alarm.

“Rum?” she asked.

“…Scotch,” I replied, probably just as startled as she had been. She’d apparently never heard of this exotic tipple. I might as well have asked for a Connecticut Bullfrog, Andover style.

She toddled off to whisper to the bartender. No doubt she thought it was something that was kept under the bar, in case of the po-po.

She came back smiling, and saying Yes, Yes, we have this ‘Johnny Walker Black’ stuff! or words to that effect. So I ordered a double.

“With Pepsi?”

And so concludes our Slice of Life in the Knife for this evening. The following I post here because it is perhaps the finest ten minutes of a bartending god as you will ever witness in your entire life, unless you buy the film The Sin of Harold Diddlebock and watch the whole thing repeatedly, as is your right. Or would be, if you hadn’t downloaded the damn thing from Bittorrent, eh?

and, for the complete opposite, here:

Did that guy actually get paid for this?

(via Whisky2.0)

Pat’s Bay Wildlife Slideshow

Parental Eagle is not so much angry as disappointed in you

Parental Eagle is not so much angry as disappointed in you

Time to take a trip in the wayback machine, as well as the puddle jumper! These are some shots I took in June at Pat’s Bay on Vancouver Island, more formally known as Patricia Bay, which is doubtless how it was introduced to the Royals. It is, by the way, a $40 cab ride from downtown Victoria, although thanks to faithful charioteer WestcoastDave on Twitter, I didn’t have to pay.

Ah, social media, you spoil me.

I didn’t even have to pay for the plane ride home on Saltspring Air, thanks to the organizers of Social Media Camp! Since I grew up in planes, I was looking forward to this flight: a true puddle-jump from Pat Bay to one of the Gulf Islands, and then to Coal Harbour in Vancouver, from which I could and did walk home. Nothing like living right downtown! Not only that, but they promised me the handsome ex-Olympian who was also the most polite pilot in Canada. Our pilot was indeed handsome and polite, but as to Olympian histories, well, I thought it was too personal a question to ask. And possibly painful. I mean, what if the answer was, “No, actually my bobsled team was knocked out in the semi-finals and my whole life since then has been a slow, downward spiral, like some tragicomic Bruce Springsteen song.”

Incidentally, the plane we flew in was a 1956 DeHavilland Beaver, a plane of which Canuckistan can be justly proud. I’m thinking Hummingbird604‘s flight home must be the first and only time he spent that long in a beaver.

But there are some good reasons to get out of The Big Smoke occasionally. I think I caught most of them in these pictures.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Tentacle Wars: Octopus vs Cuttlefish in a battle to the death!

Cuttlefish VS Octopus

Cuttlefish VS Octopus

Yes, we’ve had a lot of videos around these parts lately, but how could I possibly pass up video of a spanner-stealing octopus and what at first seems like a simple bunch of floating seaweed, before breaking loose into All Hell?

and from the diver’s comments:

I was undoing the bolts on the Current Meter housing for routine servicing, when the octopus crept out of the housing, and demanded to have my spanner. I am sure the cuttlefish must have been biding his time on this octopus. But the octopus could not resist my spanner, it made repeated attempts to steal it as I tried to undo the bolts. This game of taking my spanner went on for several minutes. Eventually I gave up on the bolts and took out my camera, which I had with me to record the condition of the Current Meter…

Each year from April to June the cuttlefish off Sydney become extremely aggressive. They often follow divers and sometimes attack them. But they love octopus. I had a repeat experience last year in May, when I again had an octopus come out of its lair to try and take a shiny buckle which was attached to a rope. After a few minutes a cuttlefish attacked the octopus exactly as before. Unfortunately for the cuttlefish, this time the octopus managed to keep half its body free, and after a minute of intense struggle it slipped out of the cuttlefish’s grip, and, I kid you not, sat on the cuttlefish’s head. So there we were, I am looking at them holding my breath, the octopus is sitting on the cuttlefish’s head, and the octopus is looking at me with a “Can you believe it” expression. After another minute of stillness, the octopus shot off in a cloud of ink, leaving the cuttlefish confused and exhausted. Unfortunately I did not have camera handy.

So, word to the wise: as we’ve said before, ANYTHING in the sea could be a hungry cephalopod, so just stay on dry land, why doncha?

Yellowknife Commute at Rush Hour

Yeah, so this is what it looks like when you walk downtown at rush hour from Buttfuck Nowhere, AKA New Newfoundland, out by the Walmart.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Not too bad, eh? Well, except for Arkham Asylum up on the hill there, overlooking the Plateau of Leng and the escaped loon in the foreground. Apparently we’re also not far from Kadath in the Cold Waste; Sarah Palin can see it from her house.

Particularly after the second mushroom.

Note also that the Warm Up Station closes when it gets really cold. I see bureaucrats the world over have the same logical handicaps.

An Explanation!

Well, this certainly accounts for what just happened to me.

http://twitter.com/#!/forgetful_man/statuses/98247762377838594