Thursday, August 31, 2006
One Very Important Thought
An owl walks into a bar. The barman says “How many times do I have to tell you? Get out! And never come back!”
It was a barred owl.
We went for an educational trip around the impressive Royal British Columbia Museum. Having shit for brains I’ve forgotten most of the things I learned, except that:
1) Sea otters swim on their backs, using their stomachs for eating off. Sometimes I do that too.
2) Sea otters eat 25% of their own bodyweight everyday. Sometimes I do that too.
3) When smallpox broke out in 1862, the Vancouver Island authorities didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory.
Somebody let the cat out of the bag.
We had lunch in a proper old school vegetarian restaurant - more of a canteen actually - in the Market Square.
It was staffed by attractive young people who looked like they were just filling time before their poetry careers took off, and you paid for your food by weight. It was like stepping backing into the eighties, to a time when Quorn hadn't been invented yet. It felt good to be among my own kind.
Afterwards we went to Miniature World, which caused Girlfriend to become very excited indeed.
Sadly, the miniature logging mill - with real miniature saws sawing real miniature wood! - is now switched off. The fear of being sued by small minded visitors with miniature logging injuries had clearly got the better of them. Shame. We were shown a video of the mill in action instead, presented in a seventies documentary style by a gigantic old man who operated the machinery as he talked. Appropriately enough, it sounded like something Boards Of Canada would sample.
Even the swing in the garden outside our room had been screwed motionless to the ground, out of a fear of the litigiously minded. Pathetic.
We went for an evening stroll through Beacon Hill Park, and spent a long time just gazing in wonder across the Juan de Fuca Strait, to the San Juan Islands and the Olympic Mountains beyond.
We saw a couple of whales doing that ‘spraying through their blowhole and splashing up water’ thing. It was incredible: to be able to sit in your local park and watch whales come and go - what kind of a life is that? I feel very envious of the people of Victoria.
In a cordoned off section of the park, some dogs and their owners were holding a ‘dog meet’, a sort of singles night for the benefit of both.
I took snaps of one of the world’s tallest totem poles.
Later on, we went to a Hang The DJ indie night at the Lucky Bar. The music consisted of bands trying to sound like eighties bands, interspersed with real eighties bands. It was quite good, especially the people watching. I hadn’t felt so transported back to the eighties since lunchtime.
Dinner Shot: Italian.
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It was a barred owl.
We went for an educational trip around the impressive Royal British Columbia Museum. Having shit for brains I’ve forgotten most of the things I learned, except that:
1) Sea otters swim on their backs, using their stomachs for eating off. Sometimes I do that too.
2) Sea otters eat 25% of their own bodyweight everyday. Sometimes I do that too.
3) When smallpox broke out in 1862, the Vancouver Island authorities didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory.
Somebody let the cat out of the bag.
We had lunch in a proper old school vegetarian restaurant - more of a canteen actually - in the Market Square.
It was staffed by attractive young people who looked like they were just filling time before their poetry careers took off, and you paid for your food by weight. It was like stepping backing into the eighties, to a time when Quorn hadn't been invented yet. It felt good to be among my own kind.
Afterwards we went to Miniature World, which caused Girlfriend to become very excited indeed.
Sadly, the miniature logging mill - with real miniature saws sawing real miniature wood! - is now switched off. The fear of being sued by small minded visitors with miniature logging injuries had clearly got the better of them. Shame. We were shown a video of the mill in action instead, presented in a seventies documentary style by a gigantic old man who operated the machinery as he talked. Appropriately enough, it sounded like something Boards Of Canada would sample.
Even the swing in the garden outside our room had been screwed motionless to the ground, out of a fear of the litigiously minded. Pathetic.
We went for an evening stroll through Beacon Hill Park, and spent a long time just gazing in wonder across the Juan de Fuca Strait, to the San Juan Islands and the Olympic Mountains beyond.
We saw a couple of whales doing that ‘spraying through their blowhole and splashing up water’ thing. It was incredible: to be able to sit in your local park and watch whales come and go - what kind of a life is that? I feel very envious of the people of Victoria.
In a cordoned off section of the park, some dogs and their owners were holding a ‘dog meet’, a sort of singles night for the benefit of both.
I took snaps of one of the world’s tallest totem poles.
Later on, we went to a Hang The DJ indie night at the Lucky Bar. The music consisted of bands trying to sound like eighties bands, interspersed with real eighties bands. It was quite good, especially the people watching. I hadn’t felt so transported back to the eighties since lunchtime.
Dinner Shot: Italian.
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