wombatarama

2011-12-31T14:38:00.001-05:00

"She smiles – not because she’s unaware of the alligators – but because she’s aware of them and because she knows how wonderful it feels when they release their jaws from your ankles."

-Wisdom from The Bloggess

Honey instead of vinegar

2011-12-21T15:03:00.003-05:00

David Malki! on dealing with someone who steals your stuff, but useful advice for life in general:

The knee-jerk response is “Cease and desist! Sue! Call a lawyer!” This implies that (a) the issue cannot be solved through more amicable means, and (b) I have a lot of time and money to throw at this kind of problem. The latter is not true, and I like to at least allow for the chance that the former isn’t either. There’s a lot of double negatives in that sequence, so I’ll restate: Being aggressive puts people on the defensive. Being friendly gets people to help you.

Also, always give the party in the wrong the ability to back off gracefully.

Learning this is one of the biggest things that has helped me in life: avoid putting people on the defensive. Sometimes it is necessary to be firm, or to express dissatisfaction, or to press for remedy of a situation. But I have never found yelling and shouting to be the easiest way to that end — at least, not as an opener.

And your problem with that is?

2011-12-16T20:29:00.001-05:00

I submit as a law of editorial physics that the author’s desire to include a fact in her narrative is directly proportional to the effort she expended to find it out, not to its relevance.

Editor: Betsy, this paragraph about how the congressman won a Boy Scout merit badge for whittling doesn’t really seem like something we need right here. Or anywhere.

Betsy: But I got that from his old troop leader! The guy wasn’t even in the phone book – I found him living in a mobile home at the end of a dirt road. It was a sweltering day, I interviewed him in Spanish…

.

-"When Journalists Become Authors"

Story of my life

2011-11-23T09:44:00.000-05:00

Damn, I hope he's right

2011-11-16T16:23:00.001-05:00

So my second piece of career advice echoes the political advice offered by Benjamin Franklin: whenever you are faced with a choice between liberty and security, choose liberty. Otherwise you will end up with neither. People who sell their souls for the promise of a secure job and a secure salary are spat out as soon as they become dispensable. The more loyal to an institution you are, the more exploitable, and ultimately expendable, you become.

- George Monbiot.

Lilly is practicing...

2011-11-02T19:12:00.004-04:00

Lilly is practicing...
Originally uploaded by wombatarama

to pick the winner of the book giveaway on my other blog. The more who enter, the more cookies she gets at the end. Go do it!

One of those days

2011-07-28T10:36:00.000-04:00

"Some days I'll rapidly thump out an article in a steady daze, scarcely aware of my own breath. Other times it's like slowly dragging individual letters of the alphabet from a mire of cold glue."

-Charlie Brooker

Remember to wear your hat

2011-06-22T08:42:00.003-04:00

Luck matters. It just does. But you can maximize luck. You won’t get struck by lightning if you don’t wander out into the field covered in tinfoil and old TV antennae.

-Chuck Wendig

Why books will not die: a range of opinion

2011-06-16T11:07:00.003-04:00

"Underneath everything, underneath the machinations of the industry and the terrible dance of agent-getting and submissions, underneath the despair and joy and wild mood swings, underneath the misery and extraordinary grace of trying to make art--underneath it all, we just want to sit together and tell stories."

-The Rejectionist

"The advantage of the books is you can give them as a gift. Our society hasn’t yet evolved to the point where we can say, “Hey, check out this URL,” and pass that off as a present, so until we reach that point, books it is."

-Ryan North (Dinosaur Comics)

Hey look!

2011-05-09T10:06:00.000-04:00

Pugs aren't the only dogs that like my book!

A long story

2011-04-22T19:18:00.006-04:00

More years ago than I want to count, I decided to write a book and get it published. So I got this Daruma, and if I understand the Japanese custom correctly, you color in one eye when you start a project, and the other when you meet your final goal. So here's how he looked for all those years, his eye, originally filled in with a permanent black Sharpie, gradually fading to gray.

To make a very long story short, well, there it is. So here Daruma is getting his other eye.

And here he is, with the finished book, with the slightly different colors of his eyes representing my years of effort, or something like that.

And here's the whole deal with a pug added because everything is better with a pug.

(There are pugs in the book too! Also zoo animals! In case that makes anyone more inclined to purchase a copy. And you can read a chapter here.)

And for dessert, a suffix?

2011-04-17T16:27:00.001-04:00

This is how to do it properly

2011-03-26T11:33:00.004-04:00

Now I feel like I've never worked at a zoo that took escaped animal drills seriously enough. (We just got to chase, like, a curator in a reflective vest. Lame.)

Important zoo safety advice

2011-02-04T13:31:00.000-05:00

long-suffering

2011-01-22T14:10:00.002-05:00

I'm thinking that my next book is going to be about how stupid dog owners are. Lilly says that she has PLENTY of material to contribute.

Some quotes from some Johns that I am keeping in mind for the new year

2010-12-29T19:15:00.004-05:00

“True success is figuring out your life and career so you never have to be around jerks.”
-John Waters

I wanted to write all-ages books, kids’ literature that stands up when you read it today... It may be that this is not what the market wants, but as an exercise it was what I wanted to do. It also stops you leaning on lazy attention-getting devices – sudden death, sudden sexy times. You have to be a lot more resourceful as you write.
-John Allison

There are many things this world has too much of, but books and storytellers are not two of them.
-John Scalzi

gingerbread pugs

2010-12-20T17:04:00.001-05:00

gingerbread pugs
Originally uploaded by wombatarama

I want to make stuff that ends up inside people's heads instead of on top, but it's the same

2010-12-14T19:10:00.002-05:00

“There is that great line in Sunday in the Park with George,” he says, referring to Stephen Sondheim’s 1984 musical about Georges Seurat, “ 'Look, I made a hat where there never was a hat’.” He falls silent again and, as unexpectedly as those coins turn to fish, big fat tears start rolling down his cheeks. “I can’t say that line without choking up, because it states, in profoundly poetic terms, what I have always wanted to do with my life. It’s so simple and so funny, but boy it hits me deep.”

-from an interview with Teller (of Penn and) thanks to Wil Wheaton's Tumblr.

Sounds right to me

2010-12-13T19:39:00.002-05:00

Of course there are different reasons to write, but if you’re interested in getting something published in the commercial marketplace, the only opinion that matters is that of the person who can either sell it (the agent) or buy it (the editor). My advice these days is not to share your work-in-progress with more than two or maybe three people whose opinions you trust and respect, and ideally have some experience in the very delicate art of offering artistic criticism.

-Matthew Gallaway, "Five writers explain how they got, kept and fired agents."

The real meaning of "not safe for work"

2010-11-29T16:43:00.000-05:00

Note: if you click on his example link, don't say you haven't been warned.

Personally, I’m a freelance writer, so I work out of my home office. That means that everything on the internet is safe for work, or more precisely, nothing is. Without the peer pressure of nearby co-workers and boss-types, the internet is a constant, beguiling temptation, like one of the Sirens of Greek myth if you could embed Flash in her.

I’d appreciate someone inventing the “NSFF” tag for me, so I would know that I’m about to click on something that’s going to grab me and not let me go until I’ve sacrificed a couple of deadlines to its insatiable hunger for attention.

Nudity would not, as a rule, get this tag. Nudity is so commonly available on the web that it’s not that distracting. I appreciate it, but take it for granted, like paper clips. If nudity is unsafe for work in the sense that standing on the top shelf of a ladder is unsafe, then TV Tropes is unsafe for work in the sense that running with scissors, near a pool, into the path of an oncoming train is unsafe.

-Lore Sjöberg (who also wisely said,

I'm inclined to like wombat because "wombat" is a great name. It's got a "wom," and a "bat," and an "omba.")

"However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me a sense of obligation."

2010-11-27T14:34:00.010-05:00

“Here is another thing to remember every time you sit down at the keyboard: a little sign that says, ‘Nobody has to read this crap’. You are not writing to impress the scientist you have just interviewed, nor the professor who got you through your degree, nor the editor who foolishly turned you down, nor the rather dishy person you just met at a party and told you were a writer. Or even your mother. You are writing to impress someone hanging from a strap in the Tube between Parson’s Green and Putney, who, given a chance, will stop reading in a fifth of a second. So the first sentence you write will be the most importance sentence in your life, and so will the second, and the third. This is because, although you may feel compelled to write, nobody has ever felt obliged to read.”

-Tim Radford via Ed Yong.

(Also thanks Stephen Crane and vozamer.)

Happy Thanksgiving

2010-11-22T19:02:00.001-05:00

No pugs were harmed in the making of this picture. Don't believe the look on her face.

Where do your ideas come from

2010-11-11T09:05:00.007-05:00

Yeah, it's like a disease, really.

Creativity is like an itch. When you scratch it, it feels good, and then it itches more. You fulfill the aesthetic urge and it pushes you to create more.

But if you don't have the itch to begin with, it's hard to know where to scratch. There's no way to "get ideas." It can't be forced. They just happen. You're eating breakfast one day and you have an idea, and either you forget about it, or you work on it and execute it. The more of your ideas you execute, the more ideas occur to you.

-Drew ("Toothpaste for Dinner")

Halloween reaches a historical milestone.

2010-10-29T12:24:00.003-04:00

The five year old son of some friends of mine, dressed for Halloween as Elmo dressed as a ghost for Halloween. This is the most awesome costume anyone of any age will ever come up with.

So not fair

2010-10-17T09:58:00.000-04:00

It's like some stuff was invented just to screw with journalists...

Correction: July 29, 2006 Because of an editing error, the About New York column on Wednesday, about William M. V. Kingsland, an expert on the privileged of the Upper East Side whose own background turned out to be a bit of a mystery upon his death last spring, misstated the name of the cemetery where he is buried. It is the New York City Marble Cemetery, on Second Street; not the New York Marble Cemetery, which is on Second Avenue.

Hobbies of the Future

2010-10-12T16:57:00.003-04:00

Lately I got together with some friends I met on the Internet, and after an excited discussion that we suddenly realized could be ended by pulling a device with web access out of a pocket, one mentioned that he keeps getting into these excited arguments with friends, and then suddenly they will stop and realize what idiots they are being and say "If only there were something - you know, like some worldwide network of computers linked together, where we could find out the answer!"

And another responded that HIS friends will deliberately NOT Google something they're trying to remember - they want to try to do it themselves.

And of course this makes perfect sense. After all, all kinds of skills that are no longer necessary turn into hobbies. Some people like to go jousting, some like to make pottery by hand when they could just buy a plastic cup... so of course, now, there are some people who want to try to figure something out without Googling it. I'm just wondering how long it takes before they start actual clubs.

Good for what ails you

2010-09-21T15:53:00.001-04:00

This is an actual syringe, almost the length of my forearm.

General Announcement to Pug Dogs

2010-08-06T15:27:00.003-04:00

1. Dogs are naturally crepuscular. This term refers to a species which is active at twilight, that is to say, at dawn and at dusk. (Cf. the more familiar terms nocturnal and diurnal, referring to animals which are active mainly at night and mainly during the day.)

2. This is a natural feature of dogs which makes them a suitable species for domestication as companion animals by a species such as my own, which naturally pursues full-time work outside the home.

3. Therefore, even if I am working at home, it is appropriate for you to expect entertainment in the evening when the workday is over.

4. So please LIE DOWN and stop jumping up with anticipation every time I get up from the computer. Thank you.

All out of Plan Bs

2010-08-01T21:01:00.001-04:00

Your first novel was rejected thirty-seven times... Anyway, what kept you going before your unexpected success as Lemony Snicket? Were you ever tempted to throw in the towel as a writer?

I was sorely tempted but could not think up anything else to do. This is how it is for most writers I know - they soldiered on simply because there was no Plan B.

-from an interview with author Daniel Handler

Take Back the Words!

2010-07-28T07:58:00.008-04:00

I was just checking the final copyedits of my book which is appearing in the spring, which includes a scene where zookeepers are chasing a raccoon around a Dumpster. That's right, Dumpster, capitalized, because it turns out, this word is a trademark.

Well, three pages of a novel that include the word Dumpster, capitalized, multiple times, reads like advertising copy for the Dumpster Corporation, so I wanted to replace it. But there is no synonym. I got suggestions from many people. They were either circumlocutions that couldn't replace one word repeatedly, or technical descriptions that no one would recognize, or words for a thing that was similar to a Dumpster but not identical.

I also discovered that many words that we all feel are normal English words are also still trademarked, like Laundromat and Bubble Wrap. Bubble Wrap!!!

Well, I've had enough. I want to start a Movement. Why are corporations allowed to interfere with the natural evolution of language? The way it works now, you can get in trouble if you use a trademark generically - but why does a corporation get to decide how we can use the language? If everyone else, as English speakers, needs the word, why does a corporation get to keep it?

Poppers of bubble wrap in dumpsters out behind laundromats, unite! You have nothing to lose but your superfluous capital letters!

SHARK!

2010-07-18T19:37:00.001-04:00

On Discovery Channel headquarters, for Shark Week. See the other end here.

Helping out a fellow creator of fiction

2010-07-12T09:43:00.003-04:00

I was walking home from the store with the pugs the other day, when a nicely dressed guy stopped me with a sob story about how his car had broken down and he was short seven dollars for a fan belt. He told me that his brother had a pug, but it was much fatter than mine, and that it was really jealous when you pay attention to anyone else, and that he was a manager at the Jerry's sub shop over on 16th street and if I ever came up that way he could repay me.

I told him I worked at the store around the corner and he said oh sure, he came in sometimes to buy cat food for his mother, he could pay me back then.

The mother's cat was the last straw. I decided to give him the money because if the story wasn't true, he had done enough work coming up with the details, he had earned it.

I liked that it wasn't a big tale of trauma and drama, just a well executed version of a classic tale, with details carefully chosen to create believable characters, and I want to live in a world where that is worth at least seven dollars.

animals behaving badly on vacation

2010-06-11T09:49:00.001-04:00

scofflaw pugs on the Rehoboth Beach boardwalk (no dogs allowed April-October)

Conspicuous Consumption

2010-05-19T09:12:00.002-04:00

I attended a neighborhood meeting last night where a police officer told the audience that they should have their house alarms turned on even when they are home. He mentioned a case where a whole family and their two dogs were all home and yet were unaware of a burglar.

My first thought was, what the &%^$ could be wrong with those dogs?

My second thought was to realize what neighborhood he was talking about. The lesson here is really this: If you have a house where even the dogs can't hear what's going on at the other end of it, your house is TOO DAMN BIG.

Meaning no disrespect, but...

2010-05-11T08:48:00.002-04:00

"True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country."
-Kurt Vonnegut

That's Elena Kagan, new Supreme Court nominee, in the center, in a picture from our high school yearbook.

Happy Pugs (Lilly & Rose) 2010.05.03

2010-05-04T09:05:00.001-04:00

Happy Pugs (Lilly & Rose) 2010.05.03
Originally uploaded by Julia Kay

The pugs as Art by Julia Kay.

More from New Jersey

2010-04-27T21:43:00.001-04:00

I fear that despite all the emphasis on recycling, the younger generation is not getting the point: all the crayons I could see in that bottle looked completely unused.

Cultural activities in New Jersey

2010-04-25T18:12:00.007-04:00

At my nephew's school, the sixth graders did a project based on Munch's painting The Scream where they painted their own version, including their own fears. I took these pictures of some of my favorites that were exhibited on the school walls.

This student has a common fear, of spiders:

A fear of hang gliders seems reasonable to me:

So does a fear of other people screaming. I guess this kid thinks that the thing to fear is fear itself:

And as far as I can tell, this student is afraid of chandeliers:

Pugs in the news

2010-04-09T22:18:00.002-04:00

This news story from Canada should NOT be used by pugs as an excuse for getting fat.

Residents of a Prince Rupert, B.C., cul-de-sac banded together to save a neighbour's dog, Bob, from the jaws of a wolf.

But it may have been Bob the pug's pudgy waistline that thwarted the attack.

Norm Hebert had heard rumours of brazen wolves prowling around Prince Rupert, but it took him a moment to realize what was going on when one showed up on Alpine Drive, the street where he lives, last Thursday.

At first, Herbert thought another neighbour's larger dog was playing with Bob.

"On second look I realized it was a wolf," he told CBC News.

Aiming to end the attack, Herbert rushed out and whacked the wolf with the first weapon at hand — a Sherwood Featherlight hockey stick.

Despite manufacturer's claims that the stick's carbon fibre shaft allowed for accelerated recoil and energy transfer, the Sherwood failed to have the desired effect on the seasoned predator. The animal merely trotted off with the pug in its jaws.

"He just glared at me … and he picked it up like a mother would pick up her kitten," Herbert recalled.

Neighbors joined in a pursuit to rescue the pudgy pug.

And eventually, the neighbourhood posse had the wolf cornered against a chain-link fence, with Bob the pug dangling from its jaws.

"Black, brown chest, he was probably a couple of hundred pounds," Deschamps said of the wolf. "We hit him with sticks and rocks and he decided to drop Bob at that time."

Bob had been punctured, but his pride was intact. Mostly.

"Apparently, he was too fat for the wolf to get a good bite into him," Deschamps said.

Perhaps sensing his continued survival on the mean streets of Prince Rupert might be a matter of size rather than strength, Bob has since refused to eat his dry food. Only black forest ham and cheese will do, Deschamps said.

More behind the scenes

2010-03-28T13:46:00.002-04:00

Pugs looking adoringly at me holding liver.

It's winter again now, cold and gray and damp. Good thing we seized the chance to party with pugs last weekend.

Behind the scenes

2010-03-22T18:09:00.000-04:00

of pug party pictures, seen here.

Cross-species diet advice

2010-03-16T18:26:00.002-04:00

The other day at work a woman came in with an overweight pug. She was easily convinced that it needed to lose weight, but didn't really know what she was doing wrong. Among other things she mentioned that the dog got one whole apple a day.

Now, an apple is not the highest calorie snack you can eat. But an apple is the size of this dog's whole head.

I would have thought it was obvious, but I guess it bears repeating: Unless you are a snake, do not eat anything as big as your head.

Shouldn't these dogs look happier?

2010-03-08T16:04:00.001-05:00

Shouldn't these dogs look happier?
Originally uploaded by wombatarama

Finally out walking on a warm sunshiney day after all these weeks of the Ice Age, and they can't look a little more cheerful than this?

Some things not to say to the nice staff at the pet boutique

2010-02-22T11:22:00.002-05:00

1. "My vet gave me a list of foods to choose from, but I didn't bring it with me."

2. "My dog (insert undesirable behavior here). Do you have like a spray or something to stop that?" No, and we don't have a spray to stop your baby from crying, either.

3. "I know your return policy is that I can't return clothes and that I have to return things within ten days, but can I return this dog coat that I bought a month ago?"

Also, when I ask you if you're changing foods to solve a particular problem, don't say "No," and then after I give you five minutes of information and we've almost made a choice, say "Will that one be good if (insert particular problem here)? because that's why we want to change foods."

Thanks.

No comment

2010-02-12T18:58:00.001-05:00

Three pugs deep?
Originally uploaded by wombatarama

There is nothing I could say that would not have bad words in it.

snowpocalypse pugs

2010-02-08T10:28:00.001-05:00

snowpocalypse pugs
Originally uploaded by wombatarama

Nice and warm in a hotel instead of our house that has been without heat and power since Saturday morning.

The snow is at least two pugs high, but so far I haven't had the heart to make them stand out in the cold while I take a picture.

Ginger helping stock shelves

2010-02-04T17:34:00.001-05:00

The pugs are never this useful. Well, sometimes they model a harness or sweater for people who didn't bring their dogs, but how hard is that?

Not amused

2010-02-02T22:08:00.001-05:00

OK this isn't funny anymore
Originally uploaded by wombatarama

Yeah, well I'm not so happy either. I spent a couple hundred dollars on new glasses that look better on the pug.

Unintended consequences

2010-01-29T14:29:00.001-05:00

Here are some of the things I do so far in my new part-time job.

1. Explain how to housebreak a puppy.
2. Give free, amateur medical advice. ("Yeah, that looks bad, you should see a vet.")
3. Give directions to the public rest room.
4. Explain that this is a pet store, and we don't sell needles/keyrings/office supplies etc.
5. Convince people that those really ARE dog cookies.

Torturing pug with birthday cookie

2010-01-23T09:15:00.001-05:00

Torturing pug with birthday cookie
Originally uploaded by wombatarama

Lilly is eleven years old. Don't you wish you knew what brand of face cream she uses? She has only the exact same number of wrinkles she was born with.

capybaras with their chins down

2010-01-10T17:34:00.001-05:00

カピバラ Capybara
Originally uploaded by CapybaraJP

If Pugs Did Decade-End Retrospectives

2010-01-02T15:42:00.004-05:00

Stolen from my internet friend David Wahl, often previously mentioned on this blog in connection with Roscoe the pug of sainted memory.

"Best 10 Smells of the Decade"

1. Prime Rib Gravy
2. Human feet when they remove their shoes after a long day
3. Pee
4. Other pugs' face wrinkles
5. That Great Dane that rolled in dead fish at the park.
6. Poo
7. Whatever it is that you're eating right now.
8. Kitchen garbage that one time you ate crab legs and left the shells overnight.
9. That dead thing you wouldn't let me smell long enough to conclusively identify.
10. Gary Shandling.

A modest proposal

2009-12-27T10:43:00.003-05:00

Who decided that Christmas and New Year's should come so close together?

In the past I never noticed that this was a problem. As an academic, I had a month off from classes at this time of year to hunker down at home and do my own work without being bothered. As a zookeeper I had no holidays off at all.

But now it's a huge inconvenience. Sure, I can write on whatever days I want. But as a nonfiction writer, I need to be able to get in touch with other people to do my work, and they're not answering their email or phones on those days. And as a freelancer it's still a lot like being a zookeeper: I have no time off - I have to meet all the same deadlines I would have otherwise. So the only thing these "holidays" accomplish is that I have to somehow pack two weeks of work into eight weekdays instead of ten.

I am sure the same is true in many other professions. What's more, I think we can all agree that we don't need another day off next week nearly as much as we need it at other times. There are entire months when Americans have no holidays.

I propose that we move New Years Day. How about March, when it's so depressing that we need a holiday? Or June, when the weather is nice and we could make better use of a day off?

The barbecue grill dreams of better days

2009-12-19T15:56:00.000-05:00

How much is that puggy on the counter?

2009-12-16T21:57:00.002-05:00

Buy one get one free!

Lilly has always wished that I would open a store where she could hang out all day. Now we are working part-time at her favorite local dog boutique, so she has at least partly gotten her wish. She hates to leave at the end of the day, no matter how long we have been there.

Why pugs hate Christmas

2009-12-11T16:24:00.001-05:00

Why pugs hate Christmas
Originally uploaded by wombatarama

Bah Humpug!

Happy Holidays

2009-12-08T19:02:00.001-05:00

Happy Holidays
Originally uploaded by wombatarama

No more stuffed pugs for Christmas

2009-12-05T09:39:00.001-05:00

I think...

(I found four more that I neglected to put in the picture. Just small ones, really.)

Oops

2009-11-30T09:03:00.002-05:00

One of the things I hated about being a college professor was when people asked me what I did for a living. Along with it being impossible to explain what linguistics is, it just seemed like such a pretentious thing to be.

So then I went to the other extreme and worked at a job where I had to haul bales and sweat and get sore and have poop all over my clothes.

Now, when people ask what I do, I have to say I am a writer. Which combines all the pretentiousness of being a professor with the low pay of being a zookeeper.

I guess I am going to have to keep trying till I get this right.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2009-11-26T11:38:00.001-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving!
Originally uploaded by wombatarama

sort of...

Pugs with Thanksgiving parade

2009-11-21T22:18:00.001-05:00

Pugs with parade
Originally uploaded by wombatarama

They are not having too much fun. Who doesn't love a parade? A pug who'd rather be at the dog store getting cookies, that's who.

Also I think Lilly did not like the competition for attention. There was not nearly enough petting considering the number of people on the street.

More from the history of infectious disease

2009-11-14T12:20:00.005-05:00

Another picture from the Halloween plague event. (I was hoping this one would get in the newspaper article, but it didn't.)

This woman is helping kids make plague masks, like the one worn by the statue in my earlier post, out of construction paper. But it's something else that's really interesting. She's not just dressed in period costume, she's dressed as a particular person from the history of infectious disease: Sarah Nelmes, who was the milkmaid of Edward Jenner. Jenner basically invented vaccination when he noticed that people like his milkmaid who'd had the related disease cowpox were immune to smallpox.

But the best part was after I wrote all that down and I asked her name. Which is also Nelmes. She thinks she's probably a relation, since her family originated in the same part of England.

(If you click to see the large version of the photo, you can see that she has costume wounds on her hands to represent the cowpox pustules.)

I have a lot of friends (I'm sitting next to the popcorn)

2009-11-07T22:00:00.001-05:00

I have a lot of friends (I'm sitting next to the popcorn)
Originally uploaded by wombatarama

Half of the pugs at today's pug party.

pugs with their chins down on other pugs

2009-11-03T19:55:00.004-05:00

lieveLolaBeer001
Originally uploaded by isawsomething

Dutch edition.

Scary!

2009-11-01T12:20:00.002-05:00

You can keep your zombies and monsters and all that fake stuff. What I did for Halloween was go to a museum exhibit about epidemics. Now that's scary.

(That's the outfit that a doctor wore to treat a patient with the plague. The beak is stuffed full of herbs that they hoped would ward off infection.)

Corn in maze, with human for scale

2009-10-27T10:42:00.001-04:00

Corn in maze, with human for scale
Originally uploaded by wombatarama

There were actual ears of corn on those stalks. I know I am a dumb city kid, but this was sort of surprising.

Idiotic dilemmas of modern life

2009-10-24T10:39:00.001-04:00

Idiotic dilemmas of modern life
Originally uploaded by wombatarama

After two years I finally took the perfect cell phone wallpaper photo of Lilly. Of course, then the phone started to die. I thought, no problem, because everyone told me, they can transfer the pictures.

Well, they can. But the new phone zooms and crops the picture when it sets it as wallpaper without asking me. So it's ruined.

I know, I should get a REAL problem. But I am SO CROSS.

Capybaras with their chins down

2009-10-15T20:10:00.001-04:00

Capybaras
Originally uploaded by swassell

Five pugs and a foot

2009-10-13T10:11:00.003-04:00

Five pugs and a foot
Originally uploaded by wombatarama

We had a party of pugs last weekend and I forgot to mention it!
More pictures here and here.

Power speaking truth back atcha

2009-10-12T09:14:00.002-04:00

From an AP story about yet another recent demonstration on the National Mall, it doesn't really matter which one:

Rep. Barney Frank... said the marchers should be lobbying their lawmakers. He said the demonstrations are simply "an emotional release" that do little to pressure Congress.

"The only thing they're going to be putting pressure on is the grass," the Massachusetts Democrat said Friday.

The newspaper of record

2009-10-06T13:58:00.002-04:00

From the New York Times:

Correction: September 22, 2009
A picture caption on Sunday with an article about the garbage crisis in Cairo, caused by the Egyptian government’s misguided campaign last spring to eradicate swine flu by killing all the pigs — once the city’s champion garbage consumers — misidentified the animals shown sampling Cairo street refuse with less gusto than the pigs. They were fat-tailed sheep, not goats.

I've written to the Washington Post in the past because they misidentified an animal and never seen a correction. It's nice that someone cares.

Thoughtful Lilly (thinking about cookies)

2009-10-03T17:23:00.001-04:00

Thoughtful Lilly (thinking about cookies)
Originally uploaded by wombatarama

Spread out all over the Internet

2009-10-01T09:04:00.002-04:00

I guess all the cool kids have one of these now:
wombatarama.tumblr.com

It's kind of old school actually. Remember when a blog used to be links to other stuff on the web? Seriously, I swear I remember that. That's why they were called "weblog" and not "online diary" or whatever.

Anyway, that's what these seem to be used for, but now we have better technology, so fancier. I'm hoping it helps with my increasing unwieldly list of bookmarks - I can put things there instead if I don't need to visit them regularly - if nothing else.

MOON cake

2009-09-30T09:50:00.001-04:00

I wish I could go to Hong Kong and get some. Look at the whole collection here.

There is no psychiatrist in the world like a pug licking your face

2009-09-28T20:55:00.001-04:00

There is no psychiatrist in the world like a pug licking your face
Originally uploaded by wombatarama

Decline and fall of print journalism

2009-09-22T16:05:00.002-04:00

Here is the saddest story I have heard lately.

I am writing a column on trap-neuter-return management of feral cats. One person I interviewed said that she went to Dayton to trap some cats, and they had a problem because they line the traps with newspaper, and Dayton doesn't have a newspaper anymore.

I love the internet, but you can't line animal cages with it.

Awwwww

2009-09-17T13:26:00.000-04:00

This is a photo from my last column by AP photographer Jacquelyn Martin. She took this one too, which is of course better because it has two pugs in it, but, wow, huh?

Plant one!

2009-09-15T16:32:00.002-04:00

Lilly entered a trick contest at an event run by the store where she goes nearly every day to beg for cookies, Living Ruff. She did a routine of all her tricks in a row, starting with the dance, including the wave bye-bye and ending with this, the Plant One.

The judges sitting at the table are Mary Alice of Charm City Cakes, famous for the tv show Ace of Cakes, Jen, famous for the Silver Spring Penguin, and some guy. He does something really worthy with therapy dogs at Walter Reed but I don't know his name, and in this picture, I am standing so you can't see him. Sorry, Some Guy.

Lilly won second place, which had a $30 gift certificate prize. She can buy her own damn cookies for a few weeks.

Adventures in local journalism and fried dough

2009-09-12T11:37:00.006-04:00

See that unassuming metal building on the far side of the courtyard?

It just looks like an equipment shed or something boring like that. But inside is the whole summer's worth of food preparation for a Greek church festival, like these five foot tall carts full of moussaka and pastitsio, ready for their close-up:

In the church basement (where it is much warmer than in the walk-in freezer), a bunch of ladies are punching dough:

and rolling it out:

and cutting it up:

and frying:

Unfortunately this story doesn't have an end yet, because I left before they finished filling the rest of the big plastic trays with the fried diples and putting honey and nuts on them:

Stay tuned and maybe next weekend there will be a final picture, but I might be too busy eating the other fried dough thing that I like better.

What writing is good (or bad) for

2009-09-09T08:59:00.006-04:00

Harvard once considered hiring Nabokov to teach literature; Roman Jakobson, then a professor of linguistics there, is supposed to have asked whether the university was also prepared to hire an elephant to teach zoology.

That is from an article by Louis Menand in the June 8/15th New Yorker. I just got around to going through three months' of New Yorkers to cut out the cartoons. I didn't find any cartoons, but I liked this quote.

I had a moment of terror realizing that I had kept the magazines since June, because I fear that if I went off the deep end, I'd become one of those people who hoards reading material until they can't walk around the house and are eventually found dead under a fallen-over stack of magazines. This fear has been aggravated lately by reading a bunch of papers on the related disorder of animal hoarding and also by a review of the latest E.L. Doctorow novel, which is about a couple of famous hoarding brothers in New York who died in the 1940s in just this way.

But more to the point: THREE months of New Yorkers with no cartoons I wanted to cut out? Is it them, or me? Are they no good anymore? Or am I old, and have read so many cartoons in my life that I am harder to please? I don't know, but there's still a list of web cartoons in the sidebar over there that I enjoy every morning, you know?

Noted

2009-09-04T21:06:00.003-04:00

There is an asteroid named after Bruce Springsteen.

There are so many asteroids, I wonder if one could aspire to this goal. Previously my highest concept of fame was the dream that someday I'd publish a book and see a stranger reading it on the subway.

Why sometimes a person just gives up and goes to Starbucks

2009-09-01T08:58:00.000-04:00

Recently I decided there is no excuse for someone who works at home, with a full kitchen, to go out to Starbucks in the afternoon for a chocolate banana smoothie. However, the chocolate banana smoothie, which is under 300 calories, is a pretty healthy afternoon snack. So the plan was to figure out to make the same thing at home.

The first obstacle was that I don't have a blender. We threw out the blender when the kitchen was being remodeled. It was a new blender that I had bought after careful research of reviews from trusted sources, which, when it arrived in the mail, I discovered had a glass container that weighed about a hundred pounds. And which didn't always screw onto its bottom properly, resulting in its liquid contents spilling out the bottom all over the blender base. There was absolutely nothing good about this blender. So when faced with the prospect of finding someplace to store it during the remodeling, I jumped at the chance to throw the damn thing out.

Now, I do have a stick blender, which I bought as a replacement, not being willing to buy another stand blender after that traumatic experience, and thinking it would take up less space and be useful for blending things without dirtying another container. It turns out that is great for things that are already being prepared in some kind of container, but stinks for making drinks because you can't really put it in a drink glass. It might work if we bought the right kind of container to use it in, but at the point of considering that, it becomes clear that what we need is a regular blender.

So, first I went out and bought a blender.

Then, I went to Whole Foods to find a chocolate protein shake mix. There's one made with soy, but sometimes soy milk gives me a stomachache. So I looked at the other, made with whey protein. WTF. They sell this at a store called "WHOLE foods"? There appears to be no entire food anywhere in this product. There was also that warning that they put on aspartame, although I couldn't find aspartame in the ingredients. I got no idea what's going on here with micro-filtering whey and having to warn phenylketonurics not to eat the stuff, but no way I am buying it.

So I decided, if the alternative was something that started with milk and then processed it beyond recognition, why not just make the thing with milk?

OK, fine. I have milk. Now I just need a way to make it chocolate flavored. So I go look at the chocolate milk powders. To make a long story about factory ingredients and the quality of chocolate short, it turns out that the only one that I find acceptable is made of just cocoa and sugar.

Well, I have cocoa and sugar at home. So never mind buying that product either. Now remember, real cocoa powder does not dissolve in cold milk unless processed in a factory, so using real cocoa means that I am going to have to make a paste of cocoa, hot water and sugar every time I make a shake. Or else find a recipe for cooking that into a syrup that will keep a little while.

Then I go buy some bananas. Which reminds me, there's this other whole problem which is that to me, bananas are only at an acceptable stage of ripeness for about five minutes. OK, for a shake, I'll eat them a little riper, so they might be OK for about a day. What are the odds that when I want a shake, A, I will have bananas, and B, they will be exactly ripe enough? Yeah.

So, chances are, every time I want a shake, I will have to go to the store to buy a banana. Then I will have to make a paste of cocoa and sugar, then I can put all that stuff in the blender. Then I have to wash the blender, and all the equipment that I used to cut the banana, make the cocoa paste, etc.

There is no way that it will be faster to go across the street, buy a perfectly ripe banana at Whole Foods - assuming they have one that day - and come home and do all of that, than it would be to walk another block and wait on line at Starbucks for a shake in the afternoon when they are usually not busy. It's also unclear when, factoring in the cost of the blender, it will start being cheaper to make it at home. I don't have the energy left to try to do the calculation, even if I knew exactly how many tablespoons of cocoa I am going to want to use and so on.

I give up. Some things are best left to a professional.

Trip to the park

2009-08-30T11:43:00.001-04:00

Pug in the park
Originally uploaded by wombatarama

You were expecting a dog park maybe? Silly.

Unclear on the concept

2009-08-27T09:52:00.005-04:00

There is a nice store in our neighborhood called Living Ruff. Now that the pugs know that they give out free dog cookies there, Lilly will not go for a walk in the morning unless I clearly state "we are going to the STORE."

Sometimes there are other dogs there and the excitment level gets so high that the cookie feeding frenzy looks like it's about to turn violent. This is usually Lilly's fault, so as in this picture, she gets picked up and put on the tall chair for a time-out.

Someone elsewhere on the internet commented that this was the happiest he'd ever seen someone in time-out and I realized, this is because she keeps getting cookies. I think we are a little unclear on the concept.

Internet wisdom

2009-08-21T21:33:00.001-04:00

New optimism test, instead of "glass half empty/full?" is as follows: "Do you read the comments on things?"

-ferociousj on Twitter

General Annoucement to Pug Dogs

2009-08-20T08:35:00.000-04:00

When I am lying in bed in the morning trying to sleep, if you absolutely must lick your foot, PLEASE do so without making that UNGODLY RACKET. I know that this is possible, because I have licked my own paw for comparison purposes and it is UTTERLY SILENT.

Thank you.

Self-Improvement

2009-08-18T21:30:00.002-04:00

I have finally reached one of my goals in life.

For years, I have been swearing that I would stop putting my t-shirts away inside-out. Finally, in the last couple of months, I have managed to get into the habit of turning them right-side out before I fold them, when they come out of the drier inside-out, as they usually do.

Don't let anyone tell you that people can't change. I am living proof.

My theory of Art, or at least music

2009-08-16T16:26:00.001-04:00

1. Sometimes stuff is good even if it's popular.
2. Sometimes you don't like stuff even if it's good, and there's nothing wrong with that.
3. It's only rock n roll. Don't get your knickers in a twist.

I said this somewhere else and one of my imaginary friends liked it enough to copy it onto his Facebook page, so I figured it was worth plagiarizing myself here.

Inspiration

2009-08-14T17:07:00.004-04:00

marriedtothesea.com

Still a nation that values reading

2009-08-13T14:24:00.005-04:00

Here's a story I forgot to tell last month, so I can give the latest update. In July, a bus driver was photographed reading a book while driving, but the story I read left out a crucial detail, resulting in this letter of mine in the Post:

I don't want to seem flippant about the safety issues involved if the Ride On bus driver in the July 14 Metro article "Bus Driver Who Had Book Is Off Md. Route for Now" was really reading while the bus was moving.

But how could your reporter have not asked the obvious question: What was the book? Those of us looking for a good summer read would be interested to know what book would deserve a blurb like "Couldn't put it down -- even when driving a bus!"

The story disappeared after that, but the resolution was hidden at the end of another article today. I was actually sort of pleased with the comparison among the punishments for the various recent offenses.

Metro has been faced with a series of embarrassing incidents involving bus and train operators this summer. The Washington Post reported this week that a train operator who tested positive for drugs is in rehab after bringing a train that was two cars too long to the Greenbelt Station. In July, another train operator was suspended for 12 days without pay after he was videotaped apparently sleeping behind the controls of a moving train.

Metrobus has also had its share of embarrassing episodes. In the past month, a driver has been charged with kidnapping a passenger; a driver was discovered driving with a suspended license; and another received a written reprimand for reading while transporting passengers.

Only a written reprimand. I still want to know what book was worth it!

Goals

2009-08-08T11:01:00.001-04:00

Yesterday I met a local blogger and my first thought was "He sounds taller in writing." My second was that I hoped that I do too.

How to save the publishing industry

2009-08-03T19:40:00.003-04:00

The other day I started the fourth book in a row that I did not want to continue reading past the first few chapters. And I thought, you know, maybe I just don't like to read books anymore. Lots of people never read books. Maybe I'm one of them.

Of course this makes it a bit awkward that I still want to write books. I mean, if I don't buy books anymore, how can I expect there to be an industry left to publish mine?

But my Technical Staff pointed out that the solution was very simple and logical. All I have to do is buy books and not read them. The genius of this, of course, is that it's what I am already doing. Now if we could just get more people to follow suit. Who knew that it could be so simple to save the whole book business?

Life with pugs

2009-08-01T10:49:00.003-04:00

A while ago, I was visiting my sister in New Jersey. As we were walking with the pugs, a woman came running toward us, waving and shouting "Pugs!" She had a pug puppy with her, so of course this made perfect sense.

We stood around and talked and took photographs. It was all totally normal. The only thing that was a little unusual was that she had one of the kids run back to her house to get treats so we could show them our tricks, but it was just a couple houses down the street, so it was really no big deal.

My sister's conclusion was that pug people are nuts. I told her that even people without dogs come running after us all the time. In fact the other day, I was walking past a shop in my neighborhood WITHOUT the pugs and a woman came running out - also without a dog - to tell me that she always saw me walking past with my dogs and that she really loved them.

If a person who actually had a pug with them didn't stop, that would so be weird that it would actually be suspicious - I'd think they were fleeing a crime scene, or something. And of course, this would never happen, because anyone who had a pug would know better than to take it along to do a crime, with all the attention they attract.

World affairs

2009-07-30T09:39:00.003-04:00

I know this is childish, but I have to say it. Next time we invade a country, can't we pick one that I am at least slightly interested in? This morning NPR spent about half of the whole morning show on reports about the election in Afghanistan. I think that I am a pretty well-informed person who feels a responsibility to care about the rest of the world, but I am sorry, I have tried and I simply can't work up the slightest bit of interest in the election in Afghanistan. Couldn't we pick a country with SOME feature I am interested in, the food or the language or some good animals that live there? Something? Just a little bit of help here?

Wisdom of the East, and West

2009-07-26T21:39:00.004-04:00

In Book II of the Analects, Confucius turns to Tzu-lu and says, "Shall I teach you what knowledge is? When you know a thing, to recognize that you know it, and when you do not know a thing, to recognize that you do not know it." Just one hundred years after Confucius, Socrates would make the same point in his Apology: "I decided that I was wiser than the man who... thinks he knows something when he knows nothing. Because while I may not know anything, at least I never pretend I do." About twenty-five hundred years later Chief Petty Officer Prendergast told me the same thing when I was learning to become a naval navigator: "The best thing is to know where you are. It's a little worse not to know where you are. But the worst thing is to think you know you are someplace when you really ain't there."

-T.R. Reid, Confucius Lives Next Door

The book business

2009-07-21T19:35:00.000-04:00

The Bobbsey Twins and Baby May received what is regarded as the most extreme rewrite; it is a story about the Bobbsey family's adventures trying to find the parents of a foundling baby. Since, by the 1960s, modern social services had rendered the original story utterly implausible, an entirely new novel was written about the twins' adventures with a baseball-playing baby elephant.

Um, because a baseball-playing baby elephant is so much more plausible, right?

(Quote from Wikipedia, thanks to Cat and Girl.)

Three Zoos Three Carousels Three Days!

2009-07-20T09:25:00.002-04:00

Dung beetle on the Bug Carousel
Originally uploaded by wombatarama

In the News

2009-07-14T13:52:00.003-04:00

This is sure true at my house:

Taller People Make More Money

And, if I had only made this important a psycholinguistic discovery in my career, I would have been proud:

Swearing Makes Pain More Tolerable

Computers still can't compete with millenia of evolution

2009-07-12T10:06:00.003-04:00

I heard the first cicada of the season last night. And I thought, uh oh. We've had unusually cool weather up to now, and I was afraid that the cicada meant that summer was finally really here.

And indeed, when I got up this morning, it was the first day where I could already feel the heat that early. There's still a cool breeze, but the humidity is lurking behind it, and it's obvious where the situation is headed. This is what July normally feels like here.

On the other hand, the weather service was predicting a 60% chance of thunderstorms overnight and there wasn't a drop and the garden is dry as a bone.

Really, should my tax dollars go to support a weather service that predicts less accurately than an insect?

The amazing animal mind

2009-07-08T20:12:00.004-04:00

The pugs now recognize the snap that my new laptop makes when it closes and come running when they hear it. They've figured out that when the laptop closes, we are either moving our location - like maybe we're going inside and are going to get a cookie - or even better, maybe we're done working for now and pugs are going to be paid attention to.