Friday, May 6, 2016

Two cranes walking
















Sandhill cranes at Burnaby Lake: up and over!


Magical encounter: sandhill cranes at Burnaby Lake


Found, lost, and found





This spring was Paradise rediscovered: we stumbled on a place we found years ago, then lost. Then found again. It's a wildlife magnet called Piper Spit on Burnaby Lake, with a boardwalk, a huge expanse of warm shallow water, marshland for nesting, and birds.

I find birds restful and spiritually soothing. Their song seems to pour balm on the rawness in my soul. We used to have tons of them in the backyard: jays, juncos, chickadees, wrens, thrushes and nuthatches, even the odd flicker. We're not sure why they're not hanging around any more, unless it's the cat staring out the window at them. But Bentley didn't seem to scare them last year.




When we stumbled on this place again, I had a feeling I've experienced only a couple of times in my life: that I had found a sort of heaven on earth. The birds here are so tame that they walk up to you (no doubt because they've been human-fed, a practice I don't believe in, though it leads to some amazing close encounters.) Every time we go there, we see new species. I'm also posting video of our incredible encounter with two magnificent sandhill cranes. For some reason, red-winged blackbirds love the place, and I had my hand less than two inches away from one of them. Now I'm tempted to try to get one of them to eat out of my hand, which I know I shouldn't.




I need this. I always feel frazzled in my brain somewhere, and often feel I can't really express myself on this blog, so I result to satire and silliness. I hate the wildfires in Fort McMurray, I fear that we are next, and am sure we at least contributed to causing it with our brutality to nature. I feel completely powerless, and the homilies on Facebook and the "hey, get involved" exhortations ring hollow.

So I have this.

I have this, which was there all along, but we somehow never knew about it. Except that we did! We went there once, years and years ago. Then the area was closed by construction and we got distracted and never went back.




Do things happen at the right time? No, they don't. Humans impose that idea on reality, to reassure themselves that (a) we are in charge of everything, and/or (b) the Universe wraps itself around our own particular whims.

None of this is true.

But I have Piper Spit, and I have just begun to explore it. I get that strange heaven-feeling I've had maybe twice before in my life. It's an enchantment that lies very close to the source of life.




HOLY SHIT! It's those Pentecostal guys - IN 3D!




Hey, y'all! It's Friday, so I thought I'd post something idiotic that I made last night. 

A few years ago, somebody came up with a Revolutionary New Idea for gifs: 3D! Basically, the figure stands there moving minutely back and forth while the background shifts slightly, and to be honest, my Grandma Smith's old stereoscope gave me a better 3D image than this.




Then came the NEW, IMPROVED 3D gif. This is being touted as a revolution in giffery, but I don't see it. I hate those white lines, for one thing. This is almost as bad as the "improved" MP4 gif with sound. Imagine a 3-second, irrelevant sound bite repeating over, and over, and over again. What people don't seem to realize is that you can watch a repeating image ad infinitum, but chunks of nonsensical sound are about as pleasant to listen to as a parrot on speed. Anyway, those lines just don't seem to do it for me, but the other night, lost in yet another late night YouTube labyrinth, I discovered. . . 




PENTECOSTAL PREACHERS IN 3D!




These are every bit as primitive, and wobble back and forth just as stupidly, with lots of distortion. Distortion is what I live for. These gifs were taken from a 21-part (no kidding - each video running for half an hour) denouncement or annunciation of the Toronto Blessing, also called Holy Laughter. I've explored this phenomenon in past posts, as expressed by Kenneth Hagin and many other equally idiotic types. But as much as this gospel of lunacy has its proponents, it also has many (MANY) detractors who seem to believe that laughing and rolling around on the floor is demonic.




I think this is Kenneth Copeland, or maybe it's someone else - I think they're all interchangeable. Most of this video was shot in the mid-'90s (how I love mid-'90s video in all its flickering, grainy glory!), but the commentator, while debunking these Pentecostal practices as demonic, keeps on freezing the frame. Well, ALMOST freezing the frame. This is as frozen (speaking of!) as a frame got back then. I can't reproduce the sound here, thank God, but the debunker kept running the "speaking in tongues" (a lot of nonsensical blather) slower and slower to make out words like, "I love Satan!" "Fuck you!" and "I buried Paul!" I'm surprised he didn't play any of it backwards. Hey, The Donna Reed Show would sound demonic if you slowed it down that much.




The guy on the right is supposedly responsible for all this hell-on-earth: Rodney Howard Browne. He comes from South Africa, which is suspicious in itself, isn't it? All that voodoo. One day in the mid-'90s he showed up at the airport church in Toronto and unleashed all this rolling-on-the-floor mayhem, and soon it caught on, contagious, like some ludicrous brain-suspending religious disease.




Uhm. The freeze-frame portions of these (21!) videos were rather limited, focused mainly on the evangelists themselves. But this has got to be the strangest manifestation of the Holy Ghost I've seen.




I'm really not sure what's going on here. Dirty little secrets? Manifestations of Satan? Sweet nothings?




This one isn't quite as 3D as the others, but it gets the feeling across. This is one of the more sedate manifestations of the Toronto Blessing.




Can't you just see the Holy Ghost shining forth in this dude? . . . You can't? YOU just try making yourself appear and disappear like that.




This Toronto Blessing thing has apparently made a much-more-modest comeback, after being fiercely denounced as demonic by Christian conservatives for years and years. It has now been "rebranded" and given a new spin as Catch the Fire.  There are slickly-produced videos with testimonials from fresh-faced, attractive individuals who have been paid to insist how this loony laugh-fest (now, presumably, somewhat toned-down) has changed their lives. Someone has been hired to give all this a much more sanitary spin.




But I'm not buying it. It's all the work of the Devil. In 3D.







Wednesday, May 4, 2016

My candidate for President (no, really)


 





. . . and his staff. . . 


WE HAVE THE PROOF: This is actually just a big ball of tin foil!!


Tennis-ball sized diamond found by Canadian firm could fetch $70M




A Sotheby's employee holds Lesedi La Rona Diamond on May 3, 2016 in New York City. (Donald Bowers / Getty Images for Sotheby's, via AP)

The Associated Press
Published Wednesday, May 4, 2016 7:07AM EDT
Last Updated Wednesday, May 4, 2016 11:48AM EDT





LONDON - A London auctioneer says a diamond the size of a tennis ball that was unearthed by a Vancouver-based mining company could sell for more than $70 million US.

Sotheby's says it will offer the Lesedi la Rona diamond in London on June 29.




The diamond was unearthed in November in Botswana at a mine owned by Lucara Diamond Corp. (TSX:LUC). It measured 1,109 carats, the second-largest gem-quality rough diamond ever discovered.




RELATED STORIES
Canadian company unearths tennis ball-sized 1,111-carat diamond

PHOTOS



An 1,111-carat diamond is shown in this undated handout photo. (Lucara Diamond Corp., Lucian Coman/THE CANADIAN PRESS)

Its name means "our light" in the Tswana language. It is the largest discovered in more than a century.

The auctioneer said Wednesday that the rough gemstone could yield the largest top-quality diamond ever cut and polished.




Last year, Lucara sold a 341.9-carat diamond of the same type for US$20.55 million.

NEWS FLASH! Weekly World News reporter Horatio von Fraudster has peeled back the myth of the Lesedi diamond once and for all.  And you're not going to believe what he found. . . 




Kitty hides in the jaws of death!








11 Beautiful Japanese Words That Don't Exist In English




Image Credit: Wookmark.com

11 Beautiful Japanese Words That Don't Exist In English
Untranslatable words from Japan, the polite and nature-loving country.

Marie Sugio in Lifestyle on Feb 16, 2016

Once, when I asked my friend from a small tribe in Burma how they would say “breakfast” there, she told me that they didn’t have a word for it because they only ate twice a day--lunch and dinner. I happen to have a lot of friends who speak English as their second language and that made me realize that a language has a lot to do with its culture’s uniqueness. Because of that there are some untranslatable words.

In Japanese culture, people have a lot of appreciation towards nature and it is very important to be polite towards others. That politeness and the nature appreciation reflected on to its language and created some beautiful words that are not translatable to English.


いただきます Itadakimasu



"Itadakimasu" means “I will have this.” It is used before eating any food to express appreciation and respect for life, nature, the person who prepared the food, the person who served the food, and everything else that is related to eating.


おつかれさま Otsukaresama



"Otsukaresama" means “you’re tired.” It is used to let someone know that you recognize his/her hard work and that you are thankful for it.


木漏れ日 Komorebi



"Komorebi" refers to the sunlight that filters through the leaves of trees.


木枯らし Kogarashi



"Kogarashi" is the cold wind that lets us know of the arrival of winter.


物の哀れ Mononoaware



"Monoaware" is "the pathos of things." It is the awareness of the impermanence of all things and the gentle sadness and wistfulness at their passing.


森林浴 Shinrinyoku



“Shinrinyoku” ("forest bathing") is to go deep into the woods where everything is silent and peaceful for a relaxation.


幽玄 Yuugen



"Yuugen" is an awareness of the universe that triggers emotional responses that are too mysterious and deep for words.


しょうがない Shoganai

The literal meaning of "Shoganai" is “it cannot be helped.” However, it is not discouraging or despairing. It means to accept that something was out of your control. It encourages people to realize that it wasn’t their fault and to move on with no regret.


金継ぎ/金繕い kintsuki/kintsukuroi



"Kintsukuroi" is the art of repairing pottery with gold or silver joining the pieces and understanding that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken.


わびさび Wabi-sabi



"Wabi-sabi" refers to a way of living that focuses on finding beauty within the imperfections of life and peacefully accepting the natural cycle of growth and decay.


擬音語 All the onomatopoeia



English has onomatopoeia, but Japanese has far more. For example, we have “om-nom-nom” for eating and they have “paku-paku” for eating normally, “baku-baku” for eating wildly, “gatsu-gatsu” for eating fast, “mogu-mogu” for chewing a lot, etc. Doesn’t it make your head spin? The onomatopoeia for that kind of dizziness is “kurukuru” by the way. The image above is showing some of those onomatopoeia. As you can see, Japanese onomatopoeia is usually a repetitive sound. Although it might be a very difficult concept to understand, it adds a melody and an emotional meaning to a word. Japanese sounds poetic because of the onomatopoeia.


Tuesday, May 3, 2016

Breaking Anne




'Breaking Bad' scribe on her 'deeper' take on 'Anne of Green Gables'

CASSANDRA SZKLARSKI, THE CANADIAN PRESS 04.28.2016



Screenwriter Moira Walley Beckett, for the upcoming CBC television show "Anne of Green
Gables", who also a writer for the series "Breaking Bad", poses for a picture in front of studio
in the CBC building in Toronto, Friday April 29, 2016. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Mark Blinch



TORONTO - The former "Breaking Bad" writer in charge of CBC-TV's "Anne of Green Gables" adaptation says she's on the hunt for "a 12-year-old female Bryan Cranston."

Emmy Award-winning writer Moira Walley-Beckett notes her version of the Lucy Maud Montgomery classic includes "a very, very demanding role" for a yet-to-be-cast leading lady.



Beckett's spin on the coming-of-age tale will be "deeper" and won't shy away from Montgomery's references to a dark and difficult past.
"Anne is damaged, she never wasn't. I'm not reinventing the wheel here in that regard," Walley-Beckett says of delving into lesser known aspects of Anne's tumultuous life pre-Green Gables.

"There's this one line that she says: 'Am I talking too much? Everybody always tells me that I do. It seems to cause no end of aggravation.' When you look at that, what does that mean? What's happened in the past?




"What's happened in the past ... is that she's been smacked across the face for talking too much or she's been punished. And I want those real aspects to inform this modern Anne."

There will be flashbacks to Anne's younger days, as well as backstories for her elderly sibling caregivers, Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert.




"I'm hoping to bring many, many more layers to the story that we love," says Walley-Beckett, who will executive produce with Miranda de Pencier of Northwood Entertainment.

"That's sort of my mantra for this whole project: Why are these people the way they are? What's happened, what's come before and how does that inform how they're dealing with the situation?"

Walley-Beckett is known for dark and twisted tales, most notably her work on the meth-making odyssey "Breaking Bad," starring Cranston.




She won an Emmy for the devastating "Ozymandias" episode — the third-to-last one in which (spoiler alert!) Hank is killed, Walt Jr. finally learns the truth and Walt kidnaps baby Holly, among other things.

The Vancouver native followed that up with Super Channel's "Flesh and Bone," centred on an emotionally damaged ballet dancer.




Both featured desperate, disturbing characters but neither show is all that dissimilar from Walley-Beckett's plans for "Anne," she insists.

The story will still be set in 1900s Prince Edward Island, but it will explore contemporary issues including sexism, bullying, puberty, empowerment and prejudice.

"What I'm interested in about Anne are the realities of her situation," says Walley-Beckett, who moved to Los Angeles about 15 years ago.




"What's her original wounding and what is the baggage that she's carrying in this situation and how has she been affected by the detriments of her life so far? ... You've got to think of her sort of as a rescue dog — as this pup who's been kicked around for years, been in shelters, been abused, hasn't had a safe place to be, hasn't ever been nurtured, and suddenly has an opportunity to find a forever home."

Producers are embarking on a worldwide search for their star.




Open casting calls will be held in Toronto on May 7 and 8, Vancouver on May 14 and 15, Charlottetown on May 28, and Halifax on May 29 and 30.

More casting calls will take place in the United States and Europe. Production is expected to begin this summer.

On the web: http://www.theannesearch.com