here kitty kitty

Posted on Wednesday, 2010 June 16 by Anton


Pillow has been missing for twelve days. *snif*

I wish I’d asked the vet to check his chip, when he was in for a shot last month.

…

Posted in pets | 3 Comments

heraldic heresy

Posted on Wednesday, 2010 June 16 by Anton

I happened to see a “demo” in a park by a branch of the Society for Creative Anachronism. (A “demo” is a small event designed to get public attention, as opposed to one where everyone present is expected to dress and behave cod-medievally.) I stopped to say hi, and mentioned that twenty years ago I was active as a book-herald: designing coats-of-arms and checking them for sufficient difference from others previously registered. This datum was received with excitement, as the local shire has no book-herald; so I indicated that, although I have no desire at all to play the SCA game, I’d happily make available such expertise as I have.

I joined the shire’s mailing-list as well as that of the kingdom heralds, and within a month caused an uproar. Warning: unexplained SCA heraldic jargon ahead. Continue reading →

Posted in fandom, heraldry | Leave a comment

where the skies are cloudy all day

Posted on Friday, 2010 May 28 by Anton

My sky has been heavily overcast for days. This impairs my sense of the hours, and sometimes makes me feel dopey.

Posted in Cascadia, me!me!me! | 2 Comments

tree dandruff

Posted on Monday, 2010 May 17 by Anton

The cottonwoods are heavily shedding what look like very late snowflakes.

The first distinctive feature I’ve noticed in the local dialect is a habit, among some people in retail (and the like), of responding to every datum with “Perfect.”

Are you together? … Perfect.
Do you need more time to look at the menu? … Perfect.
Strawberry milkshake? Perfect.
Can I get your date of birth? … Perfect.

How wide is this tic’s range?

Posted in Cascadia | 2 Comments

lapse

Posted on Friday, 2010 May 14 by Anton

I couldn’t write here for a while because my webhost’s firewall blocked my IP. Did anyone notice?

I must have done something suspicious, perhaps my attempt to change a file’s permissions using FTP. (One of my mathematical pictures returns 403 for no obvious reason.)

Posted in me!me!me! | 2 Comments

hair from zero

Posted on Friday, 2010 May 14 by Anton

Dissatisfied with my last couple of haircuts, I got the idea to shave it all off and take pictures over the following year before deciding what length I like best. The spring equinox seemed the most natural time to start such a project, so as to have short hair in summer and long in winter.

I denuded my scalp but chickened out as to my chin.

I promptly caught a cold which lasted 16 days.

Five weeks’ growth:

Answering the casting call for an Angry White Male!

My face has enough small asymmetries (my nose goes right and my chin goes left) that I shouldn’t have been surprised to find that my hairline recedes more on the left than on the right. Perhaps that’s because I parted it on the left for thirty years, so the hairs rooted there were longest, so those follicles were most stressed?

Posted in me!me!me! | 1 Comment

welcome, sinner!

Posted on Tuesday, 2010 April 27 by Anton

Last week, on the anniversary of something or other, Bill Clinton wrote (or at least signed) an op-ed containing this phrase:

we do not have the right to resort to violence — or the threat of violence — when we don’t get our way.

Wow, how often does a former head of state join us anti-government extremists?

Of course, by “we” he meant “the rest of you”. Jim Bovard‘s response to this obvious hypocrisy is the best I’ve seen so far.

Posted in politics | Leave a comment