Good eye and a steady hand

This just goes to show that it's the photographer and not the camera that produces good shots. A NYT gallery of cell phone photography.

A lesser woman would run screaming from her apartment

My cat loves this little perch I have set up for her above my desk. The windows in my front room swing outward from the bottom and have wide sills, and the screens have to be unhooked and opened inward to get at the window at all. Old-school, I know.

So I keep the screen open and the window cracked so she can hop up there whenever she likes and, you know, see the sights and smell the smells, like so:

She loves it. Spends like half her time up there, and the other half puking on my rugs. Always the rugs. Never the hardwood.

Anyway. The problem with having the window open and no screen over it is lots of bugs get in.

There are now fruit flies and house flies in my kitchen, and a daddy long legs literally fell onto my desk in front of me the other night while I was sitting here doing something or other and it waved its legs at me a few times before I grabbed one and flung it back out the window. That never used to bother me, somehow, but now bugs gives me the creeps.

Fruit flies and daddy long legs are small potatoes, though, compared to today's discoveries. I went to throw something away and found maggots - maggots - in my trashcan. I am so disgusted that I allowed the situation to progress to this point, I can't even tell you.

So I invested in a small box of these (after carrying the bag out to the garbage at arm's length):

Hopefully that will solve that little problem. But then, while sitting at my desk, below the open window, I discovered this monstrosity:


Dude, the thing covered three lines on my college-ruled notebook. I went to get a paper towel, and in the meantime it disappeared. I found it dangling underneath my desk, right where my legs would have gone next time I sat down. Which would have been in about 30 seconds.

I don't know how long I'm willing to put up with being under seige by all kinds of flying and crawling things, so the cat had better enjoy her perch while she can.

Where the fishermen are

Apparently, Ithaca Falls is the place to be if you want to fish in Ithaca.

This is how Ithaca does farmers' markets

I decided to be evil today

I recently signed up for Stumble, which is pretty much an awesome way to waste time. But I did develop a plan for world domination using Stumble. It is as follows:

Your objective is simple: World Domination.

Your motive is a little bit more complex: Sadistic pleasure

Stage One

To begin your plan, you must first incapacitate a senator. This will cause the world to sense a grave disturbance in the force, bewildered by your arrival. Who is this despoiler of all that is good and nice and true? Where did they come from? And why do they look so good as an elemental?

Stage Two

Next, you must seize control of united nations. This will all be done from a island of mu, a mysterious place of unrivaled dark glory. Upon seeing this, the world will weep uncontrollably, as countless hordes of ninjas hasten to do your every bidding.

Stage Three

Finally, you must send forth your plague of doom, bringing about the apocalypse. Your name shall become synonymous with dear god no, and no man will ever again dare interrupt your sentences. Everyone will bow before your cunning intelligence, and the world will have no choice but to name you evil man/woman of the year.

Be forewarned.

Anyone who wishes to formulate a counter-world-domination plan may go to So You've Decided to Be Evil.

Fate sealed by sadistic parents

This news stub says boys with unusual names are more likely to act out, though the examples used in the story are not even weird, just old-fashioned: Ivan, Malcolm, Alec and Nathaniel.

So what kind of trouble do you think a guy named Caesar Slaughter will get into?

Confession

My blog has just become a way for me to keep a nice, tidy list of my friends' blogs, and to have a quick way to know when they've updated them.

My own blog has become a deserted wasteland on the Internet. People visit my blog when they want to get away from the hustle and bustle of other Web pages, like city slickers who have time shares in Atlantic City, Wyoming. My blog is where Web surfers go to get in touch with nature.

So take a deep breath and enjoy. There's nothing happening here.

Ya'll come back, now, y'hear?