Splash du Jour: Friday

Have a great Friday!
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Splash du Jour: Thursday

Those born to wealth and who have the means of gratifying every wish know not what is the real happiness of life; just as those who have been tossed on the stormy water of the ocean on a few frail planks can alone estimate the value of a clear and serene sky.
-- Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo --

Have a great Thursday!
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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

My sister's cat, Lexi.
Have a great Wednesday!
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Splash du Jour: Tuesday

"Maybe...you'll fall in love with me all over again."
"Hell," I said, "I love you enough now. What do you want to do? Ruin me?"
"Yes. I want to ruin you."
"Good," I said. "That's what I want too."
-- Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell To Arms --

Have a great Tuesday!
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Now THAT'S a Bargain!

Besides a good hamburger, there are three things I really love:
1) Books.
2) Bargains.
3) Bargains on books!
<-- Check out this beauty of a deal I scored today, fulfilling category 3.
While shopping for food in the supermarket with my sister [I'm still on vacation, and LOVING it]… I wandered off to a place in the Mall where a table was spread out with books on sale. Most of them were complete junk, I must admit. But, my Spidey-Sense© was tingling.
I thought I might rifle through these things and find a gem.
I did.
Don DeLillo is one of my favourite authors ever! So you can imagine my surprise at finding a copy of Falling Man, a book I have wanted to read for a while now.
The price?
$1.00.
Even I can afford that!
So I nabbed it, of course. Which made me so happy inside [I am easily pleased] that I thought of three more things that I love:
4) Not working.
5) Beer.
6) Not working and drinking beer at the same time!
Cheers!
-- Cip
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Splash du Jour: Monday

But I too hate long books: the better, the worse. If they're bad they merely make me pant with the effort of holding them up for a few minutes. But if they're good, I turn into a social moron for days, refusing to go out of my room, scowling and growling at interruptions, ignoring weddings and funerals, and making enemies out of friends. I still bear the scars of Middlemarch.
-- Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy --


Have a great Monday!
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Vacation Adventures

A vacation is what you take when you can no longer take what you've been taking. And I'm……… taking one.
Dear friends, I am now on the 4th day of a 2 week vacation and I am LOVING it.
It's basically a family reunion -- all four of my siblings and their spouses [minus one] are together for a time of rest, relaxation and frivolity. And booze.
Not a lot of families could do this sort of thing and get along harmoniously. Mine can!
So far, here on day 4, we all wish it would last forever, and our only sad moments are when we realize it must end at some point.
We're staying at a beautiful place in Vernon, British Columbia.
And the word "beautiful" is an understatement. You can see more about it HERE.
I took the above photo minutes ago from the deck, as I write this.
There is so much I could say about my trip so far, but I'll focus on one humorous incident that happened yesterday.
We all went on a nature hike in the afternoon. [See picture below… yours truly is the fifth hiker from the left].
After our hike we were hungry and so we stopped at a pizza joint to order some food. The proprietor at first misinterpreted our intentions and started arranging some tables to seat all eight of us down while we still perusing the menu at the front entrance of the place. My brother-in-law and I, we noticed this and went over to say we would just be ordering the pizza as a take-out. The guy looked up and said, "Well, fuck you, then!" with this serious look on his face, and promptly added "Don't stay here, I don't give a fuck! I don't give a shit what you do" and several other things like this, all with expletives. THEN he sort of smiled and said "I'm just kidding" but by then, my bro-in-law was outside, fuming.
You don't talk to Tom that way..... he is a veteran prison guard and has no time for such……… hilarity.
It was weird as hell, I must admit.
The others had not heard this verbal exchange.
So now Tom is telling several others what the guy said to him and these factions arose.... some of us just wanting to leave the place and others [mostly unaware of what just happened] kept looking at the menu and stuff...... ordering. By now the owner was behind the counter. A bunch of us decided to leave as Tom was going to his car, thoroughly disgusted with this crazy whacko. We left about four of our crew behind and we went back to the house.
I was one that left..... on the way, Tom was all, "I would NOT give that guy any business. He's obviously deranged."
So we arrive back here and open beers and try to forget about it...... anyhoo..... half an hour later, the others arrive. They get out of the car nearly falling over [drunk] because after we had gone, the owner turned all nice and gave everyone FREE drinks...... strawberry daiquiri, beer, white wine, and then refused any money for the FOUR pizzas he had made. Pizzas that were supremely excellent. As in, there is no way he would accept any money. The bill was supposed to be something like $70 without the booze...... he would not take one cent for either thing.
Ahhh… that is British Columbian hospitality.
We've considered going back there and having a few drinks -- maybe even another pizza or two.
But then again, by now the guy has probably come down off of whatever drugs he must have been high on, and we don't want to risk even stranger adventures with his sobriety.
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Splash du Jour: Friday

The clear awareness of having been born into a losing struggle need not lead one into despair. I do not especially like the idea that one day I shall be tapped on the shoulder and informed, not that the party is over but that it is most assuredly going on—only henceforth in my absence. (It’s the second of those thoughts: the edition of the newspaper that will come out on the day after I have gone, that is the more distressing.) Much more horrible, though, would be the announcement that the party was continuing forever, and that I was forbidden to leave. Whether it was a hellishly bad party or a party that was perfectly heavenly in every respect, the moment that it became eternal and compulsory would be the precise moment that it began to pall.
-- Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir --

Have a great Friday!
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Splash du Jour: Thursday

The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance, but live right in it, under its roof.
-- Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams --

Have a great Thursday!
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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

Two hikers are pursued by a bear. One hiker runs away, the other stops to put on his running shoes.
"Are you crazy? Even with running shoes you can't outrun a grizzly!"
"No, but I can outrun you!"

Have a great Wednesday!
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Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings will prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition. They avoid rather than confront the world. But those with the courage to explore the weave and structure of the Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes and prejudices, will penetrate its deepest mysteries.
-- Carl Sagan --

Have a great Tuesday!
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Splash du Jour: Monday

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.
-- Richard Dawkins --

Have a great Monday!
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The Last Supper

Recently a friend asked me a question that I had to ponder for quite a while.
I don't take questions lightly -- I rarely give an immediate answer.
And so I really had to think, because the answer to this question could have gone in so many directions. My head was spinning. I started to salivate…
The question was this:
If you could have only one last meal, what would it be?

Being of an analytical nature, I wanted more information.
You mean after this meal I am going to die or something, be executed?
See -- to me, that clarification is important, because if this is what we're talking about, I don't think I would want to eat at all. I would be too sad.
We determined that the scenario is just that after this meal, you would be nourished in other ways that did not include food. Some sort of intravenous system. So, basically -- it is the equivalent of asking, What is your favourite meal?

This simplified things.
Visions of all manner of [mostly] unhealthy meat-related items went grilling and steaming and pan-frying through my mind -- but finally, with a smile, I hit on the very thing. [The above image is a rather blatant giveaway.]
I want turkey and mashed potatoes, with gravy all over.
Some stuffing? Hell, yes! Perhaps some glazed carrots on the side.
The kind of turkey that when you cut into the thing it just oozes. Not dry turkey, no… I don't want turkey that was running a treadmill before they lopped its head off.
No. I want the laziest turkey that ever lived.
I want to eat a couch-potato turkey WITH potatoes! [On my couch!]
My favourite meal. There you have it. Let's quit talking. Roast that bird.
Hand me the fork. The knife. The defibrillator.

Please feel free to respond in the comments with your own answer to this earth-shattering philosophical question.
Cheers!
Bon appétit!
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Splash du Jour: Friday

A home is not a museum. It doesn't have to be furnished with Picasso paintings, or Sheraton suites, or Oriental rugs, or Chinese pottery. But it does have to be furnished with things that mean something to you.
-- James M. Cain, Mildred Pierce --

Have a great Friday!
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Splash du Jour: Thursday

A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is.
-- Flannery O'Connor --

Have a great Thursday!
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Splash du Jour: Wednesday

"Let's see… here it is… the esteemed Dr. Cowan states, 'Closely allied to food and dress, in women, as a producer of evil-thoughts, is idleness and novel reading. It is almost impossible for a woman to read the current "love and murder" literature of the day and have pure thoughts, and when the reading of such literature is associated with idleness -- as it almost invariably is -- a woman's thoughts and feelings cannot be other than impure and sensual.' There now, Charlotte. There it is in black and white. Overthinking and novel-reading causes, at the very least, fretting, nightmares and a bad complexion."
-- Ami McKay, The Birth House --
[The character, Aunt Fran, is reading from a medical journal written in the early 1900's. So you know it's gotta be true!]

Have a great Wednesday!
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Splash du Jour: Tuesday

Have a great Tuesday!
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Splash du Jour: Monday

He had been called in his early youth and had set out for the city to proclaim the destruction awaiting a world that had abandoned its Saviour. He proclaimed from the midst of his fury that the world would see the sun burst in blood and fire and while he raged and waited, it rose every morning, calm and contained in itself, as if not only the world, but the Lord Himself had failed to hear the prophet's message.
-- Flannery O'Connor, The Violent Bear it Away --

Have a great Monday!
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Happy Canada Day in the Capital

What an exciting day here in the capital city of Canada!
I love it.
I love this Day, and this Country I live in!
<-- Our special guests this year are the royal newlywed lovebirds, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, William and Kate.
Isn't she absolutely gorgeous?
He's quite cute, also -- I must admit. And he and I have quite a bit in common -- for one thing, we both really like Kate.
Secondly, I have a similar title as the Prince.
I'm known around town as the Duke of Hamburger!
At any rate, an exciting day here, where I am relaxing with my best friend -- for now watching the festivities on the television and occasionally sauntering out onto the balcony where various manner of aircraft seem to keep flying past, as can be seen in the following clips.
Happy 144th Birthday Canada! I never want to live elsewhere.
I want to stay right here, in the greatest country in the world.