My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen...

Cheered up by memories of the Cold War

nobody@vox.com(Tubbydammer) — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 21:37:52 +0200

Today was a good day. The three DVDs I ordered from Go Faster Strip arrived, along with some Richard Herring bonus material. This is the second time I've ordered from them and they seem very reliable and they aren't at all expensive. Three DVDs may seem a lot but I have a 33 hour journey to Christchurch on Thursday - assuming all the planes travel to schedule - so three DVDs and a good long book (Miss Marple Omnibus) are definite requirements.

I'm also glad to see that more stuff is appearing on Speechification, now that summer is nearing its end. The ABC documentary about the only hooker in the village promises an interesting story, as does the two part documentary about Two Tone. Between the book, the DVDs and an iPod full of podcasts I should arrive somewhere close to sane.

But the thing that really cheered me up today was a map. The Strange Maps blog regularly comes up with fascinating pieces of cartography. Maps of people, places, stories, languages and more. Today's map came courtesy of the New York Times, which used some clever software and a database to show a lovely map of the medal table for all the previous Olympic Games.

Strange Maps showed the map for the Athens games but I don't think that was the most interesting map in the set shown on the NY Times web site. That was the map for the 1980 games. As soon as I saw it I knew that something was wrong and based on that I knew who the host was.

Where's the USA

OK, if you go to the full map on the NY Times site you'll see the name of the host city in the top right corner. But this one screams "Moscow!" at you even if you didn't look there. East Germany is just too big and there's no USA. Not one medal for America must mean that they didn't let their athletes compete and that must mean the Olympics overshadowed by the Afghan invasion.

That's not funny, but the fact that the East German bubble is so swollen by medals that it spreads over the edge like an athlete full of anabolic steroids is. Not that I approve of the state poisoning athletes so that they can win in a proxy battle against a cold war enemy - but the imagery itself is quite amusing.

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Vox Hunt: Feel the Frustration

nobody@vox.com(Tubbydammer) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 12:05:39 +0200

Show us something frustrating.

It's got to be travel delays and lost bags, hasn't it? Here are two. The first is from a travel meltdown (that thankfully missed me) on 25 Deember 2004, when I flew to San Francisco. Tens of thousands of Americans got stuck in airports and had their bags lost or misdirected. The second is the neatly printed sign to the lost luggage counter at Lisbon Airport back in December 2002.

Apparently the Romans used to call baggage "impedimenta" and I totally agree with them. These days I do my best to avoid checking luggage when travelling. Sadly, that will probably be unavoidable for my trip to Chistchurch later this month.

Lost Baggage

Irregularidades Bagagens

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Dead Pigeons: a history

nobody@vox.com(Tubbydammer) — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 18:55:19 +0200

I rarely see dead pigeons. I know this must be true as I remember each one I've seen over the last decade. I'm not sure why this is. Perhaps they tend to die on rooftops, or perhaps foxes and other carrion eaters are so quick off the mark they spend precious few minutes on the streets and squares of our cities. Whatever the reason - they are a rare sight in my experience.

The first one I remember seeing was not just a dead pigeons but also a live pigeon. I was standing at the tram stop, waiting for a tram. There was a pigeon pecking away at something on the road. It was so entranced by the baked goodness of whatever it was pecking at that it ignored the bus the drew up behind it. Alas, it didn't pay attention when the engine tone became higher, indicating the bus was about to pull away.

The bus pulled away just as the bird was pecking at the ground. Its head fell beneath the bus's tyre and came clean away. The headless bird continued to wander around for a minute of so after the bus had departed and then fell down. No doubt, whatever it was that kept the pigeon walking after the loss of its head was a little confused.

The second pigeon (pictured below) was a brace of birds that seemed to be a religious offering of some kind. I walked past them on a Sunday afternoon in Montevideo after a very long flight from Amsterdam. I've never been quite sure why people would want to decapitate a brace of pigeons are serve them, uncooked, on a bed of popcorn. If you can explain it, please leave a comment!

Beheaded_pigeons_461

Finally, this afternoon's dead pigeon. This one still had its head attached to its body, although it had a far less glamorous resting place than its family in Montevideo. I found it around the side of my apartment block and I can only hope that some cat or fox makes a meal of it before it starts stinking the place up.

Pigeon

I'm almost tempted to get out a recipe for pigeon and start looking for some fresh pigeon meat from a farm. I'm sure a smoked pigeon breast would make a tasty starter and a couple of pigeons could make a tasty casserole. Mmmmm.

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Westminster

nobody@vox.com(Tubbydammer) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 23:21:38 +0200

I used to work next door to the Palace of Westminster. It was a pretty cool place to spend some time while I was at university. There were TV screens in the corridors showing who was speaking; there were divisions bells that rang occasionally, calling members to vote; and it was pretty great to walk through Westminster Hall, which dates back to the 11th century.

Today I was in Westminster for a meeting and loved the look of the palace in the sunshine. In fact, the sunshine was so bright it made it quite difficult to photograph the palace from Parliament Square, so I had to touch the photo up a bit.

It was great to pop back there again and have a gawk at Pugin's glorious design.

The Palace of Westminster

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Vox Hunt: Striped Showoff

nobody@vox.com(Tubbydammer) — Mon, 19 May 2008 16:12:52 +0200

Show us something striped.

I took this picture in Skagway, Alaska a couple of years ago. The light stripes are the result of avalanches. The snow knocks the trees down and lighter coloured bushes grow in their place. The bears eat the berries that grow on the bushes. It's all very "cycle-of-life".

Avalanche Trails

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Tea and tatties

nobody@vox.com(Tubbydammer) — Thu, 08 May 2008 08:48:59 +0200

Knowing that I was going to want a really good cup of tea when I got back from New Orleans I asked Julie for recommendations on somewhere in Santa Monica. She suggested the Tudor House and I gave it a go. Good call.

The tea menu was everything I had hoped for and the tea came in a generous pot and wasn't the weak, insipid stuff I drank at another place the week before. The service was friendly as you could hope and as fast as you'd expect in the US. I really didn't need the fried potatoes that came with my omelette but they were very good and I thoroughly enjoyed them. I deny anyone not to enjoy fried potatoes or a really good pot of tea.

I think I know where I'll be drinking tea when I'm next in the area.

Tea Cup

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Not a paradox, a blog post

nobody@vox.com(Tubbydammer) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 04:18:39 +0200

Today, Massimiliano and I visited LACMA. It's a great museum, with an excellent selection of art movements and styles, although it doesn't seem to have a permanent photography exhibit. On the other hand, it seems to cater well for kids, as there were several interactive art-creation stands in and around the campus.

I enjoyed the docent talks on abstract expressionism (of which I knew nothing) and Robert Motherwell. I'm not sure if I could say that I enjoyed Motherwell's Elegy to the Spanish Republic (100) but I loved David Smith's piece, next to it. I can't find a picture on-line but this one is quite similar and is outdoors, which is where they were intended to be displayed. Want.

But I suppose that it was inevitable that having travelled over 4,000 miles from Belgium, the painting I most enjoyed from the collection was this one from Magritte, one of Belgium's most brilliant artists. It's always struck a chord with me. I expect it stems from my love of paradox and patterns. And as much as the statement is true (it's an image of a pipe), it's also funny.

Ceci n'est pas une pipe

Before visiting the museum I hadn't realised quite how close it is to the La Brea tar pits. I've wanted to visit them ever since seeing them in movies when I was a child. Standing next to them, smelling the tar and seeing it bubble away was excellent fun.

The museum and the tar pits both look like they're worth a second visit.

Tar Pit with Bubble

Ground Sloth

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Can't cook, will eat

nobody@vox.com(Tubbydammer) — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 04:34:30 +0200

I don't have a kitchen to cook in at the moment, so I bought a different set of foods than I would normally choose at the Santa Monica farmers' market, this morning.

As I've said, the really good ingredients don't need much in the way of cooking, anyway. So while it would be nice to experiment with some of the vegetables I saw there and don't have at home I wasn't too worried. I started off buying 2oz of sliced, dried persimmons. They're not too sweet, chewy and don't have that mouth drying effect you sometimes get from a raw persimmon. But they definitely have the fragrance and perfume you get from the fresh fruit.

Then the chap running the fresh fruit stand gave me a Fuji apple to test. I did and I liked it. Sweet and crispy, it was a great breakfast and most likely more healthy than a muffin or a pastry. I got half a dozen to take back with me so that I have something healthy to start the next few days with.

If it hadn't been so hot I'd have stayed longer. But it's still April and I'm not yet ready for 90°F, so I made a hasty exit and did a very un-English thing and found some shade.

Dried Persimmons and Fuji Apples

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Vox Hunt: A Cut Above the Rest

nobody@vox.com(Tubbydammer) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 11:56:30 +0200

Show us a photo of you with a funny haircut.

This isn't actually my hair. It's a hat I tried on in a shop in Alaska. After checking in a mirror I decided against buying it.

Hair

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Still lots to go

nobody@vox.com(Tubbydammer) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 14:32:48 +0200

So now that I've visited Colorado and China for the first time I've updated the maps of the countries and US states I have visited. Frankly, I think there's still not enough red on these maps. So much more to see. I'm hoping to add New Zealand and Ethiopia soon. And I'd like to see more of Scandinavia, Iceland, Greenland and Chile if possible.

Worldmap

Statemap

I made the maps with Douwe Osinga's visited countries and visited states tools.

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