Compact Fluorescent Lamp Dies: Man Regains Sight

Burndtree, squinting Marpole resident and blogging whiner, seemingly has regained his eye-sight in an unscheduled household chore involving a failing compact fluorescent lamp in his living-room torchiere.

"I dug out the spare CFL in its dusty bag. It's been a few years. Happened to read the packet." explained Burndtree.

"Besides the fact the CFL contains toxic mercury, the packet recommends the 13-watt CFL in place of those 60-watt incandescents I used to burn there. Then I read the lumens: how bright each would be. My eyes just about popped from my head. 850 from my good ol' fashioned incandescent. Only 800 from this...thing! No wonder the place has seemed so gloomy. For years. No amount of positive thinking on my part ever was gonna lighten up the place..."

Burndtree continued cracking jokes until the reporter threatened to leave.

Burndtree got to the point: "Screwed in a 60-watt incandescent. Had to squint, 'coz it was so bright. I can read my scribbles now. I can see!"

1200 Limos...Now There's a Number

So...the Copenhagen Summit's one for the history books, is it? Should really edit that line, insert here that So. Adding a question mark, naturally.

Same regarding their zero-hour agreement of sorts before parting ways. About as binding as Kyoto was. Sooo? I am forcing a smile, really.

1200 limos — oooh, there's a number!

Usually these summits, as they call them, produce at the end a group photo, grinners and growlers wearing something colourful, like a holiday snap. Media photo-op and a souvenir: as much for them as us, watching them — some of us even waiting on them. The eye-popper of 1200 limos will be how I'll remember that august gathering. That most recent august et cetera. 1200 limos. Cyclist-and-Public-Transit friendly Copenhagen hadn't enough limos of her own for ferrying the august et cetera about their august work: limos had to be got in from Sweden and Germany; I imagine driven in, or onboard fragrant diesel transports.

And the lake of jet fuel: who could not see that? Globe-trekkin' jetsetters, their entourage, and accompanying media, they gotta burn that jet fuel. Perhaps an exaggeration, there. Perhaps not a lake. Perhaps I'm imagining just a bit too imaginatively, there. Just as I've been imagining too, too long now that all this getting-together could be managed best via this teleconferencing I've heard has made massive techno-leaps since soup-tin and string. Most greenly, these summiteers could summit, via the blessed phone. And no need at all then for a promised forest in carbon offsets every time they yearn for another get-together someplace exotic.

But they do love their buzzwords, eh? As much as they clearly love to talk. And meet, evidently. Canada, too. We have our own career summiteers. And entourage. And hypocrisy.

They're as a group mildly entertaining. They're hardly guides. I believe I shall now go stomp down some soup tins: that always puts me in a lighter mood.

Wonderin'

I'm in a wondering mood. Wondering, first off, if I still remember how to write stuff such as this. Wondering if this moment, and anything I might manage doing over on Protag, will be a fading memory Monday morn: I might catch myself staring in the bathroom mirror, like someone back from vacation, and only the sunburn reminds it really happened.

Wondering about the seafood tanks at Superstore this morning, too. Live tilapia, nosing into the current bubbling from the aerator. Among them, a tiny not-tilapia: a whiskered catfish, sleek and agile as a torpedo, and more like a specimen you might purchase for the aquarium than dinner.

"Prob'ly not from around here," said the old gent, who had stopped by to eyeball rainbow trout in the next tank.

Old gent then recounted fond days of his youth, in Alberta, in the Rocky Mountains near Montana, and pulling out trout by the dozen. We both remarked about the price stuck on the tank edge: that two-pound trout, about twelve dollars.

Neil Young, along with the Shocking Pinks, Wonderin', just on the radio, started me wanderin'. Work's been...work. I'll leave it at that. It's been a long busy season.

Telegram from Undisclosed Location

Dearest Mama STOP
Agree Dada most loud on wireless STOP
Agree visit from Big Bro likely STOP
But loud most needed Dada shouldn't stop STOP
Allowed to say am well STOP
Love All Bingo

--

Been re-reading Orwell's 1984. Can't say why. We have so many freedoms, don't we?
Okay, am mapping out a story. Rants don't feel the way to go.

Seriously, now, my latest Writing World newsletter put me on to this unsettling bit o'news.
I encourage you to go read it. Yes, and at this point I should poke my usual fun, eh, add 'Read it, while we can' — and a Haarr'Haarrr all around.

The link will take you to the Telegraph, Uk: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/6533107/Every-phone-call-email-and-internet-click-stored-by-state-spying-databases.html

A Bit o'Play

Dear Brother,

Havin' returned from weekly shoppin'...

Naah, let's go a bit more imaginative than weekly — Cummon! I needs t'cut loose, after all that bleepin' work.

Dear Brother,

Havin' returned from the monthly drive...

Betterrr.

...monthly cart ride along the river road, the engineers' road, to the landing and Harry's General Store for provisions, I take these moments while tea's a'simmerin' to Hail You, to scribble this greeting you likely shall not read 'til spring breakup, when the river again is ice-free, and Ol' Prosperity, the mail steamer, can steam. Hello.

Harry wore his Saturday shirt, though it is Monday. In every other way, Harry remains Harry. Will likely go broke extending credit to settler and forty-niner alike, the kind ol' soul. He took it in fair trade, my thirty pelts, all manner of furry critter, from fearsome marten to vicious gnu, for flour and sugar, blackpowder and shot, for miso, and mojito mix.

Harry's a saint, a'right, and well deserving of Ingrid, as you pointed out to them envyin' naysayers, you surely recall. Harry won her fair, and Ingrid woulda brooked no other, so I'd have called it as you did, a match. She remains as fine, and a dead ringer for the corset gal in the Eaton's catalogue. There weren't a dry eye when Captain Mack, from Prosperity, married the pair of 'em on Steamer Beach just before the ice came.

And this, too. As I mounted the cart for going, Harry sent out his Ingrid, in her swirling apron, to catch me. Smiling on me and fixing me in her bright eye, she put in my hand a butcher's packet of chilled kangaroo, just arrived from the other end of the world. "A sampler", she said: for my adventurous palette. Aye, Brother, Harry and Ingrid are good people.

Is city life agreeable with you? How ARE you? I ask this with utmost concern and sincerity, not as newfangled smalltalk. In your letter of June 21st last (received, at last, November 12th), you mentioned political corruption, rampant, if unsurprising, and impending influenza. I hope you have remembered your unsophisticated brother's cautionings at your goin'away, and secured yourself both a reliable stock of garlic tablets and a hazmat suit. Regarding the political corruption, rampant, if unsurprising, I agree: mocking laughter sometimes our only recourse, perhaps.

Brother, my tea has stewed nicely. Perhaps I shall add to this, as this missive ain't goin' anywhere soon. Or, perhaps I shall afix missive to missile, to firework stuck in the sand of Steamer Beach, once I've worked out the guidance software. Aye, am perhaps becoming a mite silly. And yet, am glad at last I could play a little.

--

That was fun! It's been non-stop busy at work, y'see.

Uggghhh, and a WooHoo

Uggghhh...
6 megs to update for my antivirus...
Wonder if that means Avira, the AV solution currently installed, is going to dig through this machine's pre-installs and decide, again, WildTangent Games, and such, are this malware Avira so enthusiastically works to protect me against? Avira did that last year at this time, after a similarly huge update. I keep records, yesss, patiently keep these patient records: my huge red binder. From Norton, through CA, and now Avira. And all the special little gifts from Windows Updates over the years. Every hiccough. Every event. Every session 'til shutdown.

37 minutes...Yeah, on dial-up. Reality in a half-century old apartment building. I'm not gonna muse further on that: not on the obvious advertised alternatives, not on what's actually available in a half-century old apartment building. When the building super's around to let Mr.HighSpeed in to do his magic below in the utility room. When I've time for it, when I can get time off in this much-yammered-about economic slowdown, I'll go do it.

It's not that I especially want to be online right now, anyway. If I'm online, I'm not writing. Even this blogging: it's talking about writing, I might even think-out something I want to write, but it's not writing. There are weeks of projects I haven't had time for. Much-yammered-about economic slowdown, again — and the usual pre-Christmas busy'ness, here, as usual. So I'll do my online banking next. Check-in and see what's happening at Protag.

And whatever else...Ohhh, special! Was gonna add...can't remember now. Windows Updates wants to share my dial-up bandwidth.

Oh, right — Get some writin' in, too. Obviously.

I did, one time, this week. Remembrance Day, Nov 11, was a holiday. Managed a lovely section of outline and 1600 words. Something to woohoo over.

Idling...

The Light was Green

Light was Red

Light Stayed Amber, for the Longest Time

He Always Said “I’m Late” – Now He Is

Dot. Dot. Dot.

Silly epitaphs are running through my head. Humorous scratchings across headstones. Can’t say why they’re there, one after the other. Maybe it’s the same as humming a tune: after the umpteenth hum-through, changing the words for a bit of play. I’m just wiped, after this day at work. My mind’s being playful. Craving play. Want to do more of my NaNo plot. Want to go to Protag. Belatedly, to say Thanks to Tasha for her congrats re my mercenary’ism. ‘Isssm. And say “I like that” – at least that – for Miss Bolsheviki’s Skin Deep Damage, and her latest for Mage Hunting. And read – anything.

But there’s still work here. And I shouldn’t even be idling in my blog.