natural history, photography, science

Yeuch of the Day

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Noreen was off early(ish) today on a work outing. On her way she phoned me to say she had found an embryo lying on our front garden path and had moved it into the shrubbery nearby so no-one trod on it. (Handily we keep a trowel by the front door for burying the cats’ prey.)

Of course being interested in natural history I had to go and look. And yes, there was a roughly 4 inch long fresh foetus, complete with placenta still attached. Nice! And of course I just had to photograph it.

But what is it? Well it isn’t human as it clearly has a tail. Phew! It is too big for domestic cat – it is bigger than a new-born kitten. Being London this immediately says it is going to be either fox or dog. I would guess it’s too late in the year for fox, and maybe a little large.

Hmm. Interesting, if slightly yeuchy – but not as yeuchy as I’d expected.

If anyone really wants to see the photo you can find it here. I bet you all say “yeeuuuwwww”, but still go and look anyway!

arts, beliefs, quotes, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

Another in our occasional series of quotations encountered during he week which have struck me: because of their zen-ness, their humour, or their verisimilitude.

Lend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting and … ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to “walk about” into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want?
[Wassily Kandinsky, 1910]

The unreal is more powerful than the real, because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because it’s only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on.
[Chuck Palahniuk]

It doesn’t matter what you’ve got in your pants if there’s nothing in your brain to connect it to.

Hanlon’s Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

… the result of some wobbly high-heel work at a drink addled giggle-fest.
[Alison Cross]

amusements

Auction Oddities

As usual there are some strange, and slightly zen, lots in our local monthly auction.

A conductor’s baton, in ebonised wood and silver, London 1920, and a silver child’s fork
Is the fork for use conducting, or the baton used as a child’s eating implement? 

A stuffed red squirrel clasping a nut, perched on a branch. 

An old wooden bottle box containing old garden tools, trowels, chisels, hammers, an old fire extinguisher, a carton containing an enamelled measuring jug, old door plates, a first aid box incl. old spark plugs, an enamelled bread bin and lid containing a pair of green plastic picnic tables for suspension from car windows, a collection of shells, old buckets, an old water feeder by Eltex, 2 prints, etc.
Why does one keep spark plugs in a first aid kit?  Or green plastic picnic tables in a bread bin?

Old wooden cartons containing a large number of small terracotta garden pots, some in an old pram body, a small wall cupboard and an empty box
It was the “pram body” which finished me off!

A Belgian brass trumpet signed C. Mahillon, in case, a pair of shoe trees, and a club.

A python skin, four metres long.
Every home should have one!

I’ve never actually been to this sale as, apart from the odd sword, I’ve never seen anything of interest to me.  One day I must go to the viewing if only for amusement.

quotes

Back Numbers

As hinted a couple of days ago I’ve now retrieved and reformatted the posts from the first incarnations of this weblog.  Well almost all.  What I found the other day was everything pre-March 2005, so there was a gap which I had not realised.  I have today found another file containing a further 79 posts from 2006.

However I am still missing a minimum of 20 posts from 2006 which were on a Yahoo!-based system and which I cannot now locate.

Adding that lot (and the posts of the last couple of days) to my previous totals gives me a grand total of 1117 posts, with 983 of those being specifically to this Zen Mischief weblog.

If anyone really wants to read all this old tripe you can find it in two PDF files:

But be warned: there are almost 70 pages of it!

amusements, beliefs, nudism, thoughts

Nude Day at Work

I’ve posted quite a bit about nudity, naturism and “clothing optional” over the years; a search on “nudity” will pick up the majority of postings.  As you’ll all guess by now I’m a great believer in not wearing clothes if I don’t need to: “nude when possible; clothed when necessary” is the motto.  Having said that I’m not an active member of the naturist movement, partly because I’m not a clubby sort of person and partly down to sheer convenience; I do though support British Naturism (BN) by being a member.

All of which is a preamble to say that I’m not sure I have blogged this cartoon before; if I have it was before this incarnation of the weblog, so a long time ago.  You’ll need to click the image to get a larger, readable, version.

Now wouldn’t that be a great idea.  I wonder which company would have the courage to be the first to introduce Mondays (or any day!) as Nude Day at work?

personal, photography

Zen Mischief Website Updated

At long last, and after three days solid effort, I’ve completely updated my Zen Mischief website.  And not before time either!  I started the revision over 2 years ago and got as far as completing the design before I was rudely interrupted by work.  Only now have I made the time to complete the job.  Although at the moment the content – essentially a static backup to this weblog – is largely the same, all the text has been revised (some pages more than others), all the links checked, dead links removed and many new ones added, and all the images have been overhauled.  I have ideas for new pages and I hope they will be along over the coming weeks – there’s a lot that gets an airing on this weblog but isn’t covered on the website, an omission I hope to rectify.

science, sexuality, thoughts

We're Unique!

What makes humans special and unique?

Well according to a recent Scientific American article it is very simple …

We masturbate.  A lot.

(Oh, come on, it’s not that shocking!)

But the uniqueness is that no other animal, including our close primate relatives, does.  The theory seems to be, at least in part, that it’s all to do with the ability of our well developed brains to create entirely novel and imaginary picture shows and videos.

I’ll leave it to you to follow the link and read the article.  It’s long, but it’s interesting, especially if you’re a science geek.

books, photography, quotes

Milestones Passed in the Dark

Last night I had a realisation, the way one does, that I must have written quite a few blog posts.  But how many?  Having awoken at stupid o’clock this morning I figured I’d use the time to try to work it out.  Could I even do it?  This weblog has been through at least three different incarnations and the old blogs are no longer online.

Wait!  I have backups.  Do I still have the old files?  No, not on my current PC: well I did trash a lot of old data when I migrated to this machine recently.  So let’s search the archive disks … and …  Lo! we do have the old files, saved in an archive of my PC three before last.  (How sad is that?!)  So I was able to do a count …

“I don’t believe it!”  If I go back to when I started blogging in January 2004 I reckon I’ve written 879 Zen Mischief weblog posts (this will be number 880).  And we can add to this another 134 for the Anthony Powell Society.  That’s a total of 1013 in 6½ years, or three a week.  Not prolific by many blogger’s standards, but prolific enough for me, especially when you add in almost 2000 photos (and that’s just the edited ones!) posted on Flickr since February 2006.

While not everything I write is wholly original (whose writing is?) I’ve covered everything from beer, by way of diversions into naturism, science and Bagpuss, to zen.  Hmmm … not bad!