There's no deadline mentioned, but I'm assuming it approaches... Race ya to the finish the current "Cryptic Couples II contest of Archie McPhee. Loving you...

posted at 9:15 PM

Lynn Crosbie makes this great quote in this week's column on the magazine scene in which she tackles a handful of Canadian literary journals:

Publishing poetry in Canada is comparable to singing at a karaoke bar: The audience's response, however generous, is rigged by virtue of their own need to get up and interpret The Wind Beneath My Wings. Poets, in effect, preach almost exclusively to a choir of other poets

Well-versed in more than just Margaret and mascara
By LYNN CROSBIE
Globe and Mail
Wednesday, February 13, 2002 – Page R2

posted at 8:57 PM

Yesterday, Ghengis and I drove through the countryside. On our return in the late afternoon, we passed a number of farm fields that were just filled with crows. Many many many crows. Fields of crows. Doing nothing... waiting? It was disturbing. You couldn't help but thinking of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. A fear cliched.

Sometimes we forget that the reason why a cliche exists is because it's true. I read the passage below as I sipped my morning coffee.

SOCIAL STUDIES
A DAILY MISCELLANY OF INFORMATION BY MICHAEL KESTERTON
Globe and Mail
Monday, February 11, 2002 – Page A18

"Ravens. In November, Michael Stocks was gutting a deer in the Alaska wilderness when his bride Tiffany accidentally discharged her rifle, injuring him in the leg so badly he later required an amputation. "I could hear her screaming for help [on the radio]," Mr. Stock told The Juneau Empire. "I just kept grabbing snow around my leg to see how bad I was bleeding. The worst part was the ravens. They came from everywhere, it seemed like," adding ravens can bring bigger predators."

If you know any trivia at all, you know that a group of crows is called a 'murder'.
And now I know why a group of ravens is called an 'unkindness'.

posted at 12:36 PM

Today is the end of Rain Barrel as a web-log. Now, it is officially a BLOG.

Sigh. Too bad this transformation is late for Rain Barrel's third birthday.

posted at 9:12 PM

I'm preparing for the plunge...

posted at 9:05 PM