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At Least it Wasn't a 9v Battery Glued to the Ace of Spades...
When I got this index card in the mail about a year and a half ago, I was puzzled.
Who sent it?
What does it mean?
Why the lower case "i"s?
The envelope held no clues (no return address), and - much to my chagrin, the guys down at the post-office didn't have a giant computer that could determine where it had come from. So, as it didn't seem to be a threat or anything other than weird, I chucked it in a drawer.
I first thought it seemed like some kind of chain letter. Well maybe not exactly a chain letter, seeing how chain letters usually contain some sort explanation from the fool who sent it. Something like "send 50 copies of this note to people whose names rhyme with 'cheese', or the Pope will explode".
I only had "WiLLPOWER iS MY NAME", and an envelope addressed to "Magpie Web Design". The single bit of information I could glean was that the sender had to go look up my postal code at the post office/Shoppers Drugmart/whatever because it was written in different ink than the rest of the information.
Fast-forward to today and, as I'm surfing the blog-o-sphere, I come across ms. firecracker's page. Lo and behold, there's a photo of some crazy guy sporting a bunch of pink and blue file cards as headwear. The one directly on his forehead says "WiLLPOWER iS MY NAME".
When did the tinfoil hat crowd start using 4" x 6" index cards to protect their brains from psychotronic control? Perhaps this guy is on the vanguard.
So, from ms. firecracker's post, I now know that the dude is from Cobourg, Trenton, or quite possibly - the moon. Also, he seems to dislike Taco Bell. But then again, don't we all.
I'm off to the dollar store to pick up a big pack of pink index cards.
June 29th
2007
              Here's a small gallery of my animal pix.
June 5th
2007
Top Flight
In part one of my new one-part series, "Better Know a Bird", I present the Osprey.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that the Osprey is a member of the bird family and, as such, locomotes through the use of "wings". These appendages are obvious, and may be seen protruding from either side of the animal.
It's sort of difficult to tell here, but he has some kind of prey in his hands. This would likely be a fish, as Osprey (Pandion haliaetus) are avid fish eaters. Pretty much every other language for Osprey (they occur over every continent except for Antarctica) has the word "Fish" in it. Like Fish Eagle, Fishhawk and Large Bird That Eats Almost Only Fish.
I refer to this one as "him" because, compared to his mate, he had a narrower body and "thinner" wings. Girl Osprey generally have more curves. Viva la difference.
At the time I was taking these shots, the female was off being royally harassed by a really small bird. It seems that it was the males' job to hold onto the groceries and to do a couple of flybys to check me out.
I'd say this guy had a wingspan of six feet, and (according to the bird book) that would put him in the four-pound range. That may sound light, but birds usually are - that's why they're the one's who can fly. That, and the wings. The wings help an awful lot.
May 28th
2007
Top Gear
I've been checking out Top Gear on BBC World Wide for more than a year now, on-and off. It's a sort of automobile review programme where these three absolute gits talk very passionately about cars. They also do some rather extensive stunt-y sorts of things - often involving the destruction of bit of the English countryside (and some cars). They are also quite fond of nipping across to the Isle of Mann to film a segment or two, as (outside of towns) there are no speed limits. Zoom zoom indeed.
Well, the lads that host the show are such personable and quick gits that it makes for compelling watching even for non auto-enthusiasts. Me included. I don't even have a driving licence.
Like I said, there are three hosts: The Hamster, The Guy Who Looks Like Jimmy Page, and the Old Guy. The Hamster is the little guy - I'll leave it up to you to figure the other two out.
One of the stunt-type-things they attempted to do for the show was that of propelling The Hamster as quickly as they could whilst he was strapped to four wheels and a Bristol-Siddeley Orpheus Turbo-Jet Engine. This was all terrific until, at 288mph, he went from being the fastest man in Briton to the fastest traffic accident in the Isles.
After some serious brain injuries and 5 weeks in hospital, he was back on the programme, looking and acting like nothing had happened. Except that he has no memory of the crash and now he likes celery.
The Hamster Returns:
May 22nd
2007
Just a Couple of Numbers
I was listening to the Mothercorp the other day and, somewhere between plant advice and war crimes, an interesting statistic slipped into my consciousness. There are 23 thousand homeless children in New York City.
Is that enough? Are we done - can we stop playing now?
I don't mean to criticize. I can't criticize.
I'm comfortable.
Technically, statistically - my co-conspirator and I exist below the poverty line. The reality of it, though, is that we exist like small emperors, by fate friends and family.
Comfort, compared to happiness, is an important thing - or so I tend to think. I suspect that happiness only exists in the text of greeting cards. That's why so many people get so screwed up looking for it.
Or so I say.
Anyway, 23 thousand homeless kids in N.Y.C.? Just wow. I'm not criticizing here, but isn't that city one of the most wealthy, liberal and racially diverse places on the planet? I mean, if we can't make it work there, maybe we can't make it work anywhere. If the combined diversity of brainpower, empathy and money of New York City leaves that many children to the wolves, maybe it's time we give everything over to the humpback whales or something.
Now, today, I heard another number (this time on NPR), 2.3 million illegal guns in New York City. Instantly, sinfully, all I could think was "well at least those homless kids are well armed".
Of course, that would actually give each kid a hundred guns. Maybe they could use the extras to build small shelters or something.
Or so I say.
May 21st
2007
Heady Stuff
After work, and a number of adult lifestyle beverages, the conversation came around to decapitation. Sooner or later, all conversations do.
Tony wondered how much thinking people did after decapitation and before death.
Here I take pause to mention that the assembled empty and near empty adult lifestyle beverages read 5.7% on the sides of their bottles.
Like most people, I've often pondered this. How much cognition is there in a person sans anything from the neck down?
How could you tell?, was my question-as-answer. I figure that it would significantly reduce one's communications skills to have one's head translocated from one's body. My handle-bar mustached compatriot thought the easiest way would be to simply start talking after your head hit the basket. (We were assuming traditional guillotine-type decapitation here, not the "internal decapitation" phenomenon that has made the news as of late.)
It took a bit of persuading, but I finally convinced my friend that it would be hard to do much talking when your head and lungs are newly located in two separate zip-codes.
Well, maybe blinking then, blink a code or something. I'm not sure if it's a myth perpetuated by history teachers or not, but I do remember being taught that people have tried to do this. The obvious problem here being that, having incurred that much trauma, a person might be expected to twitch, blink or spasm in any number of involuntary ways. Also, I stipulated as I retired another brown bottle, there are lots of folks out there who would contend that we do as much thinking in our spinal column and nervous system as were do in our brains. Maybe when you chop the computer in half, it doesn't work anymore. Or, perhaps we should be looking at the other 88% of the body. You know, for a "thumbs up" or an "okay" sign. Here again, we run into the problem with the involuntary twitches, spasms, and convulsions associated with such fantastic trauma.
Your mileage may vary.
For some reason, the discussion thereafter degenerated into an argument over who would win in a fight between an Empirial Star Destroyer and the U.S.S Enterprise.
Sooner or later, all conversations do.
Anyway, I'd always thought that the death device know as the guillotine was called a guillotine because that was the name of the person who invented it. Reasonable enough, right?
Well, it seems that a man by the name of Dr. Antoine Louis sketched the plans for the top-chopper and it was built by Tobias Smith, sometime in the late seventeen hundreds. I wouldn't exactly go as far as saying Dr. Louis invented the device, as people have seemingly been devising ways of chopping off heads (mechanical and otherwise) all the way back to the beginning of recorded history. Yeah humanity!
So why is it called a guillotine?
Dr. Joseph Ignace Guillotin was a member of the French National Assembly during The Revolution and, as such, was no stranger to seeing heads roll. He was a bit of a bleeding heart and once gave a very nice speech in which he implored that there ought to be a good, quick, mechanical way to kill people. He was sort of like a Dr.Phil of the 18th century. People were so impressed with this sentiment of merciful mechanical killing that, when the La Louisette came on the scene people began to call it a Madame Guillotine (or some variation there of).
It looks like the transmission of this idea, this meme of calling it a guillotine, was by way of a drinking song. I don't know the words, but I bet it's one damn cheery ditty.
And, no - in case your history teacher was a drinker too, Dr. Guillotin did not die by the device that inappropriately bears his name. The good doctor went on to die of anthrax at the age of 75 (terrorism was not suspected).
Dr. Guillotin's kids went on to petition the government of France to change the name of the death device, as it made it really hard at job interviews - kind of like how Mr. Lethalinjection's resumé must get shuffled to the bottom of the pile today.
In the end, the Guillotin family were given permission by the government to change their name so as not to have it confused with the head chopping gizmo. What the?..
Well, I guess it's back to those adult lifestyle beverages.
May 19th
2007
Cold Horses
It's funny, the way things follow things sometimes.
It was a lazy snowy holiday Monday morning and I had taken my camera into the bathroom to take a shot of a nifty spider. Of course, between the time I sighted the critter and the time I returned with the camera - the thing had crawled off.
As chance would have it, there was an equally cool shot to be had out of the window.
April 14th
2007
Some Artwork, Photographs, and things in-between with Inordinately Long Titles
Delicious Strawberry Jam... That's Right Kids, People are Made of Jam
An Instance of Her Stance, The Way She Stands - on a Summers Day
Towards the Ground, The United Flow of Three Kinds of Water
Feb 24th
2007
Some Photographs,
With Thoughts Attached
Step One:
Set camera for a short time exposure - somewhere around a second or two.
Step Two:
Start the time exposure while immediately initiating Step number Three.
Step Three:
Toss previously mentioned $1000.00 camera into the air.
Step Four:
Catch.
Big kiss on a PVC drainpipe.
If every picture tells a story, I'm not exactly sure what this one is saying. Somehow I can't bring myself to imagine the sort of occasion whereupon this would happen.
Many of our memories (T & me) of 2006 will be of our ripped-up street. A one-month job stretched into two, and then three. In the end, it went to six months and then they only stopped because winter finally came.
The scene above was arranged on our lawn like some post-mechanical nativity.
Handheld time exposure at midnight - so it's a little blurry…
The construction crews were fond of repeatedly digging-up and then filling in various bits of our already disassembled street. Like forgetful surgeons, they often seemed to be going back in for lost tools. Also like surgeons, they left the street with strange tubes sticking in and out here and there.
At night, they took on the strange aspect of giant proposing grub-worms.
Though-guy butterfly admirer - a portrait.
Love was in the air…
These two spry traffic cones just couldn't keep their polyvinyl shells to themselves.
Still, they do look good together and I wish them all the best.
Update: I hear that, as of January 2007, the large one has been reassigned to Canadian border duty.
A perverse sense of inverse curiosity hit me when I took this shot. If I looked inside the box I might find something wonderful, or unknowably nasty. Like maybe Champlain's sextant or that glowing stuff from Kiss Me Deadly.
My first thought was of delicate hand-blown glass thingies - like tubes and stuff. But the idea of having it go off like the Arc of the Covenant kept me from ever cracking the lid.
Feb 17th
2007
Of Serendipity and Monsters II
Jake decided that it was silly of me to be taking shots of a stone gargoyle when there was perfectly good cat around.
Feb 12th
2007
Of Serendipity and Monsters
It's funny, the way things follow things sometimes.
After a day of taking shots of cats in sunbeams and watching three Godzilla movies (Mothra, Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla, and Godzilla vs Destroya) in my very own butt-numb-a-thon - a sunbeam landed on my half-unfinished cheap-plastic crap Godzilla model in such a way as to suggest he had some kind of grudge against those CD's.
The trick is, of course, standing in exactly the right place - making for a cool in-camera effect. The observant geek will notice that Gojira is standing on a numbered diagram indicating where his many-many spikey scale things go. The helpfull nature of these instructions is also a major factor in why the thing is unfinished.
The generally observant might notice the great-big cracks in the monster's body. This speaks to its cheap-plastic crap nature. (That, and my own shoddy workmanship).
Feb 9th
2007
An Error 404 Page of Niftyness
Once in every generation an Error 404 page of such dry and subtle wit is born…
Feb 1st
2007
A Million Little Numbers
In 1955, the RAND corporation published a book of exquisite and intentional disorder. Although "A Million Random Digits: with 100,000 Normal Deviates" never made the New York Times Best Sellers List, it did have what no other book had: one million random numbers, rendered in handy hardcover form.
The uses of such a tome of Erisian splendour run the gambit from Turbulent Diffusion plotting to certain Discordian religious rites.
Anyway, I found it kinda nifty.
Jan 30th
2007
Dude and Jake
Dude, Jake, and sunbeam.
As I've said before, if you want to find the good light, find the cats.
At least I think I've said it before. In any event, I'm saying it now.
I think.
Jan 29th
2007
Through a Rainy Lens
I've always thought that the world looked best on rainy days.
Wet windows making slow oil paintings of the outside world.
(Self-portrait, again - Through a Rainy Lens.)
Jan 24th
2007
Taillights
I saw a photo of an old taillight in a time-yellowed magazine.
The magazine was from an era when taillights were optional for automobiles and, as such, it offered an ad for an assortment of after-market tail (and/or break) light kits. Even though the near-wood-cut illustrations, you could see that they were nifty Victoredwardian things - all copper, brass and cut-glass.
So, that's where the fiery thing above started.
I mean, that was the idea.
Jan 23rd
2007
Email: mark@magpiedesign.net

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Magpie Design offers a wide variety out-of-the-ordinary photographic prints and posters as well as impressionistic fine art and irreverent apparel (oddly funny t shirts).
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