wondering weeds
For the last few years or so, we haven’t had much water around these parts. There are so many references that I could cite, there’s probably no point in trying.
This seems to be causing the land under my feet to reach back to behaviour from my youth. I don’t recall that time being a drought such as this, but I was young, so I may not have known.
The lawn is long dead. I didn’t know you could also kill weeds by ignoring them, but add a touch of no-bloody-rain, and, yup, they up and die too. Brown, dead and brown.
Then, it suddenly went all purple. Having chatted with Bunni about the ‘beautiful’ fields of purple (fields of noxious weeds called Salvation Janes), she asked me to find one, press it for her and post it away. So, of course, I couldn’t find a single one. It was then that I realised how long it had been since I had seen even a trace of them.
One day, some months later, I came home to find a patch of violent purple in the midst of the dead and scorched weeds that is the ‘lawn’. Salvation Janes! I grabbed my camera phone, snapped a happy snap and promptly fell straight over (right into a patch of prickles and thorns, if you must know).
Where have they been? How is it that a weed brought over from Europe can cope so well in these conditions? When we’ve been carefully hand watering the native plants that still survive, what is that allows these purple rebels to live on?
While we did dig them up and throw them away - noxious is noxious, after all - a Salvation Jane is currently being pressed underneath an oversized book of words in a dark corner of my house. Contrary little bugger that it be.
Lid of Doom (Lid of Justice, Lid of Fools)
I was turning a lid over and over in my hands the other day. It had a ‘fun factoid’ or some such on the inside of the lid. It read:
“Ants stretch when they get up in the morning.”
Right. And there you have it. Lids. It says it on the bottom of a juice lid, so it must be true. A little like “I read it on the internet, so it must be true.”
I think from now on, when I need to research something, I will forego hard work, cross referencing, multiple sources. That’s all just a load of malarkey. All I need is a Lid. A lid of Truth.
Perhaps they could market the lids this way? New! Lid of Truth! Lid of DOOM! Lid of you’ll believe anything you read, won’t you?”
And, of course, it doesn’t stop at lids. There have long been lolly wrappers for our enjoyment and edification. There are sugar packets of wisdom. It probably all started out from the humble fortune cookie. But, that’s not where it finishes. Oh, no.
The gentlemen in the room may, at this point, wish to look away.
Recently, I also noticed some writing on the back of a pad. Not writing pad, I’ll have you note. A pad of the feminine hygiene product variety. Factoids about spiders and hummingbirds and dust mites and sneezing and… aaaaaaaaargggggh.
“Libra ODD SPOT #69
Only female ducks can quack.”
Quack, quack, bloody quack.
Please move along. And take your Fantales wrappers with you as you go.
Why are there so many songs about rainbows?
- cross post from threecornerjack.com.
A little while ago a friend was kind enough to find and play “Rainbow Connection” by Kermit the Frog for me.
I mentioned at the time that it was one of those songs that always cheers me up, no matter how awful I’m feeling. It’s not a particularly well crafted song, but that’s not what these sorts of things are about. At least, not only.
The song holds something innocent within it, some childhood connection that continues to withstand the passing of time.
Every time I hear it, I can clearly see the see-through green 45 single that the song played on. Also, I can just recall the record player - I think it was a white one, but I’m not sure. It was definitely portable.
As a child I used to sit in the hallway, at the end between the kitchen and the loungeroom. That way I could usually see both my Mum and my Dad. An added bonus was that I could close the doors to the kitchen and the lounge room if I decided to ‘crank up the volume’. Which was pretty much all the time.
However, it’s not just this detailed and pleasant memory. It’s a mixture of many things; it’s Kermie - in all his green glory, it’s the memory of Jim Henson - a man I wished I’d met just so I could hug him, it’s the mention of a rainbow - a more beautiful sight in the sky I’ve never seen, it’s a memory of these things and others, made tangible by just one little song.
“I know I drive some people crazy with what seems like ridiculous optimism, but it has always worked for me.” - Jim Henson
duck
This is a picture of some ducks. Nice aren’t they?
Now that’s where I stop. Some overly paranoid types say this is a picture of ducks sitting evilly and plotting to overrule the world. Tch. Just some happy little ducks playing in the sun I say.
ducks are NOT evil
Popular opinion has it that ducks are evil. This is patently wrong. Ducks aren’t evil.
Just try doing a search in Google for pictures of evil ducks. How many evil ducks would you find, eh? It all gets a bit obscure, I can tell you.
Update: What’s interesting about the above paragraph? Google is now in on the evild duck conspiracy!
Originally, when I first tried the image search for evil ducks there were got scant results. Then more and more results would pop in. So, a year or so ago, I set that link up to actually search for eeeeevil ducks on Google. With five eeeees you got no photo results. Google only offered “No standard web pages containing all your search terms were found” with perhaps a “Did you mean”, such as you might get with a search for a random pile of letters.
It was once pointed out to me that ducks are a little bit tricky. This is, just possibly, true. However, I now can’t help think the same of the good folk over at Google. Perhaps, when it all comes out in the wash, we will discover that Google is in fact run by ducks.
ducks are good
Given that ducks are definitely not evil, I’d say that there aren’t enough ducks in the world. We need more ducks. No, really.
"Quack."—Tibbles the Duck
advice on collecting ducks
Don’t do it. Just don’t. Ducks aren’t evil, but collecting them is. If you think you can stop whenever you want to, you can’t. All of your family and friends will continue to collect for you many years after you’ve, politely asked, pleaded, begged, sworn, and, finally, threatened violence at them to stop. This is true if you didn’t even start the collection in the first place, but had it inflicted upon you. It’s that duck trickiness factor coming into play.
backyard ducks
A year or so ago, I was sitting in the back room in our house and I looked into the backyard to see a duck waddling around! (grainy photographic evidence included).
duck links
Yes, that’s right. Ducks have an evil community that links worldwide. Hah. No, these are just some pointless, timewasting and generally stupid links about ducks and duck things.
- YouTube has brought us ever more great duck adventures, be they weird and beautiful, cooky or just taking us back to the classics.
- I would say that QuaCky My Life & His frienDs is a quacking good adventure.
- I wish I’d seen these giant ducks on film or from ancient times for myself
- ah, what a great vision - A Rubber Duck to Every Bathroom aims to achieve just that. Includes useful features such as the Rubber Duck Standard and guides for use.
- the duck planet has extensive collections, duckfests, duck forums and duck whatnot
- these little yellow things are truly ducks ahoy! and out to sea…
- oh my… well hung ducks
- great googly moogly, it’s a very big duck
- different types of ducks; dabbling, perching, rosy… a look at the ducks of the world
- totally obsessed by ducks - part 1 and part 2
- don’t bother to respond to the call for ducks. I sent him a duck a couple of years ago and it’s not on his site - maybe ‘they’ thought it was a duck bomb and it never made it through customs)
further ducks
Oh, so you think you need more ducks? If you really think that way, take a look at these well hung ducks, torrent ducks, duck names and more, it should put you off ducks for a while.
"Is it because duckling sounds a bit like underling that the word seems so ominous, or is there something else going on?"