I beheld a strange sight when I stepped out my door this morning: a pair of cute little baby duckies waddling down the sidewalk, all alone and peeping frantically. They passed right by my house (of course—the miasma of evil is not inviting), turned left at my neighbor’s driveway, went up the sidewalk, and hopped up the stairs to their door. It was so peculiar — I haven’t seen any ducks in my neighborhood lately, and these two helpless ducklings were clearly lost — that I went up to the door, frightening the little guys away, to ask if they’d been raising ducks and had a couple of escapees. No, they were as mystified as I was. We caught them and put them someplace safe, but now I’m wondering…

I don’t believe in omens so I don’t really need an ornithomancer to interpret the movement of birds, but being a few miles from the nearest body of water does make me wonder what the heck they were doing here. My neighbor is going to call the DNR to see what can be done with them, too.

Ahh, Seattle.

Seattle is godless.

We are, rather famously, one of the least churched cities in North America. It seems that most of us have better things to do on a Sunday morning than go to church. Seattleites would rather take a hike. Or nurse a hangover. Or fire up the bong.

It sounds like my kind of place…and it should, I grew up there.

So I’m taking a little vacation to the Pacific Northwest, and will be visiting family and taking in the sights the first week of July, from the 1st to the 8th. All you Seattleites can use this thread to tell me how wonderful the place is and what I ought to do in my brief visit there. Is the Science Fiction Museum worth seeing? Any fabulous seafood restaurants that have opened in the last 10 years? Good brew pubs? I think I’ll skip the churches.

And of course, if anyone wants to meet up somewhere, sometime, maybe we can arrange something here. It’s a brief visit, unfortunately, but I should have an evening or two free.

Dang. Tagged. Can’t you people leave me alone?

All right, here are the rules.

1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
5. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog

I suppose I could list what I had for dinner over the last 8 days, you guys don’t know that, but then I’d have to confess about those lazy days when I ate microwaved leftovers over the sink, and there’d go my suave image as a debonair man of culture. So instead you get eight random recollections.

[Read more…]

My family of five has precisely four cell phones between them. Guess who’s the odd man out? I think Apple knows this, and have specifically targeted one of the ads for their new iPhone at me. This is horribly cruel. Not only is the ad focused on calamari, but wow, that gadget is sweet and elegant and had me thinking that I must own one, now. Hitting me with techno- and cephalo-lust at the same is no fair.

Fortunately, I have also seen the price, and I have seen my bank account, and I have seen my income, and that particular work of artfully hewn technology is squarely in the domain of economically impossible. But if I ever see someone with them, I’m going to ask them to find the nearest seafood restaurant for me, just because.

That weird guy Dave Ng put out a call for bloggers to flaunt their drinking containers. That’s easy, at least.

1. Can you show us your coffee cup?

As if there were just one…

2. Can you comment on it? Do you think it reflects on your personality?

From left to right:

• I wrote some imaging and lab automation software that was marketed by Axon Instruments a decade ago, and I still have a few of their cups around.
• Yay, Minnesota Citizens for Science Education!
• I went to the Darwin exhibit at the AMNH, and now I drink from Chuck’s head.
• A bit hard to see there, but it’s the classic Darwin fish in gold on a black mug.
• ScienceBlogs, of course.
• There’s a nice Pharyngula parody site, Phawrongula, and the creators sent me an official Phawrongula mug.

None of those reflect anything about my personality.

3. Do you have any interesting anecdotes resulting from coffee cup commentary?

No. Drinking coffee is serious business.

3. Can you try to get others to comment on it?

I doubt it. Now everyone will refuse to comment, just to be contrary.

I’ve got a better idea of what my schedule is like, and even have a recommendation for a hangout tonight — would anyone care to join me at the Arbor Brewing Company tonight (Thursday) around 7 or 8pm? I’m going whether anyone shows up or not, and if nobody joins me, I’ll be drinking alone…and how pathetic would that be?

Look for the bearded fellow with a copy of that book with a bright yellow cover titled “God is Not Great” — I’ll be working on my Hitchens impersonation.