The Magpie Bjournal

Exactly when did Britain become one great-big fascist clusterfuck?

Looking like they might be on the receiving end of a titanic Tolkien Estate Beatdown^tm, this is the most amazing fan film [trailer] that I’ve seen since Pink5.

Additional LOTR awesomeness found here.

I think I’ve noticed something about old photographs (waaaay back, from the 1980-90’s) of myself and friends with our computers, Atari 2600’s and such things. I think this should also equally apply to any old photo of you, yourself from the age of TRS80’s, Timex Sinclares, Apple II’s and ColecoVisions.

What I have noticed (and it really helps to have a dorky old picture of yourself to refer to here) is that if you let your eyes randomly focus on any other object in the photograph, that single object is worth more today than all of the computer stuff in the shot.

I didn’t even know that hotel rooms had safes. Apparently we shouldn’t trust them very much.

[Why isn’t the plural of safe saves?]

British police encountered London newsagent Ian Tomlinson walking along the pavement. Then they murdered him.

Number One: Things With Strings

My Mom used to shoot things with a bow and arrow. She generally only shot archery targets and things that deserved it.

We found her bow and a bundle of arrows in the attic when we were kids. The bow was what they call a recurve and it was in the thirty-pound range. More than enough to seriously wound a water balloon, in its day.

The bow was made from some kind of 1950’s fiberglass material. It may have even been fiberglass. I don’t know.

It had quietly weathered annual freezing and baking in our attic for thirty years by the time my brother and I came across it. After a dozen or so plunks into the backyard fence, the bow (whose face indicated that the wielder was part of some kind of Queens archery team) began to fray along its length. This quickly lead to structural collapse and eventual demise. The arrows weren’t looking good either.

Mom wasn’t mad when I told her - four or five days later. Beyond being glad that everyone involved still had two eyes, Mom was quietly pleased that we had taken an interest in part of her history. She asked me if we had come across any of her old Queens badminton sets while we were up there, poking around behind the walls in the attic.

We found the stuff that she was talking about – nets, spikes, lines, rackets and shuttlecocks. The rackets were stored in wooden presses. They were emblazoned with more university team crests. Like the archery things, they smelled of dust, mothballs and cedar.

It took us an afternoon to wreck all that stuff too.

So, I forgot to say that my Mom had been an archer and enjoyed badminton too.

I sat, held her hand, and watched her eyes become beautiful in new ways.

In Memory

My mother was a dancer. Some summers, as a kid, she didn’t have shoes.

She moved to town and went to high school.

After that, she went away to Kingston and became a nurse.

She wanted to become a nurse ever since she was a kid, because of two women who used to live down the road. They were both nurses and they made these amazing little sandwiches that involved peanut butter, mashed banana and a loaf of bread cut sideways. They came out as little mouth-sized spirals. After having them for first time, Mom knew that she wanted to be a nurse.

Somewhere in there and after that, she met Donald Malcolm Harrison - Massy to his friends. They easily caught each other’s eye.

That’s how they became my mother and father.

I’d say that they were my brother’s parents too, but I still have other theories as to where John came from.

Mom graduated from nurse’s training in 1958 - at least that’s what it says on the tiara that she keeps hidden away.

Early on in her career as a registered nurse, she worked with mental patients – a job that just barely prepared her for the task of eventually living with four men… My father, my grandfather, my brother and I.

Jaki Ryder, Jaki Harrison – Mom; she was mother to us all who lived at or passed through 18 Victoria Street. Even the cats. Maybe even especially the cats.

There was a time before John & I came around, a time Mom and Dad referred to as B.C., or “Before Children”. That was a time of travel and of golf – Jamaica, Mexico, France – anywhere Mom would look good on a beach.

And Mom was beautiful. Movie-star beautiful. Anyone with a memory or a photograph can attest to that.

When John came around, in 1965, that pretty much put an end to their leisure time. Thankfully, they had a very good second act, when they were able to travel again - years later - where they were both retired.

Keeping in mind that I didn’t arrive until 1968, and that I am more than likely a little hung-over right now, please forgive me if I have any of these details wrong.

I’m trying to avoid specifics here anyway. I figure that the fewer people I mention, the less likely I give anyone the offence of being left out.

The first Doctor that I could ever remember was Dr. Ryan, a mild mannered Irish physician of the military extraction. Mom worked as his office nurse and go-to-girl for just about the same number of years as she did the next former-military Irish Doctor she would eventually come to help manage.

Mom’s third act came in the form of being a patron of the arts, lover of fine wine and good books - along with enthusiastically participating in Tai Chi and yoga. She loved to read and she loved music. She liked opera, but not all opera. She never listened to pop music; she always preferred a bittersweet torch-song to anything else.

Mom had all the luck in the world to have a fourth act. Not everybody gets one of those. She found another partner-in-crime in John A.

They were on their way to touching the four corners of the earth together.

And I just don’t know if anyone could ask for more than that.

After losing his entire right wing, an Israeli Air force pilot decides to land his wounded F-15 Eagle anyway.

This 1997 Letterman interview with freshly fifty Farrah Fawcett “loses contact with the rails” at about three minutes in.

I always thought that the only thing missing from the M110 Sniper Rifle was an iPod. The long nightmare is over now that we can all have side-mounted iPods on our 7.62×51mm semi-automatic sniper systems.