Croc Teasing

I love the Crocodile Farm, really I do, but the "Crocodile Jumping" attraction is overhyped. The sign at the front of the attraction shows a croc jumping out of the water like a porpoise at Sea World. At the 'Farm, they give you a fish head on the end of a line on a pole and you can go dangle it in front of the eyes of a croc in a sometimes successful attempt to get its attention.

All in good fun, I'm sure.

Please Kill Me Now

Simultaneously feeling quite the fool, I am considering the purchase of some kind of reading tablet, maybe one of the Kindles. The mere consideration of this gives me a somewhat otherworldly feeling, as though I were viewing the event from afar. These new technologies, if one can generalize, generally sicken me.

None of this new technology lives up to its hype. Take this blog post, for instance. Do I own the copyright? Will I be able to access the copy in the future? Who knows? I am typing this in real time, with no back-up, so if someday there's a "pay wall," or a "software not supported" problem, that'll be that. (In a cooler frame of mind I save them all as Word documents, with appropriate back-up. I'm old fashioned, but I'm not stupid.)

Or am I? I'm typing on an Apple IMac, and although I really do love the interface and the display I must admit that I am convinced that Apple's major corporate emphasis is keeping the user from completely enjoying his own property. I just tried to make a CD of my own pictures, and although I did find, at last, the instructions on how to do so, and copied them out, and followed them assiduously, it was finally impossible to accomplish. I own an IPod, and I would dearly love to load the contents onto this Apple, but alas, that would be impossible. Apple is desperately concerned about so-called piracy evidently, so much so that it is willing to inconvenience nearly all of its dupes, I mean customers.

Maybe you could have done all this, but so what? Is new technology just for you? I ask for help sometimes, and I don't get it.

I then tried to print a couple of pictures myself, rather than having the CD to take to the store. I wanted to avoid this, because my printer makes me even more furious than the rest of my technology. It was cheap, the better to make the money on the always running out four colors of ink. Amazingly, printing only text uses up vast quantities of magenta, cyan and blue as well as the black. "Paper jam!" is my printer's middle name, especially with anything heavier than an Aerogram.

My deep conviction that I must jettison the printer to preserve my happiness led me in the first place to wonder if a Kindle would better serve me. All I want to do is pull text off of the 'Net and read it at my leisure. I don't really need the great reams of paper that I've been accumulating.

Oh, why do we struggle so? It'll all be over soon. Everything will be digitized, and everything "real" will disappear from the world. Get used to it! Digital is the Antichrist, but that's another story I suppose.

So, should I get a Kindle?

Good News! Kim Jong Il Left Plenty Of Photographs

One of my favorite sites is kimjongillookingatthings.tumblr.com. To me, Kim Jong Il was the greatest source of unintended hilarity in the world, from the ridiculously bouncy goose-stepping parade troops to the absurdly over-manned public displays of affection for, well, Kim Jong Il.

I was afraid that his recent semi-anticipated demise would be the end of the site, but I was wrong. Evidently he left a treasure trove of photo's of himself looking at things. At some point, I'm sure that the site will move over to showing pictures of the new "Supreme Leader." That'll be fine, he looks pretty funny too.

The Best Room-Reverb In The World, Bar None

I went to a Christmas party in this house, and I can tell you that this bathroom is the single greatest sound enhancer in history.

It's two bathrooms actually, that's the secret. Each room is about nine by twelve feet, tile floor and wall all the way to the ceiling, and you can see in the picture that they're connected by a wall that stops eight or ten inches from the ceiling. This venting, this connection, doubles the natural reverb, it's absolutely amazing.

You sing a song in here and you sound like Caruso, I swear.

Some People Just Like Monkeys

Today's trip to the Crocodile Farm was a gift to this friend of mine. She's up against it right now, but this picture with the monkey really put a smile on her face. She put on her best outfit and her best wig for the occasion (that chemo is a bitch). Spent a lot of time on her make-up too, and gave me her best smile here. It's a croc farm, but mostly she likes the monkeys.

We had a great time, and it was no trouble at all. This picture proves that it was a good idea, and appreciated.

Croc Wranglers Risk Lives For Baht

Sure they know the tricks, how to relax a crocodile so it's "safe" to put you hand in its mouth. It's like NASCAR though, sometimes things go horribly wrong. A couple of years ago the audience at this place was treated to a croc clamping down on a guys arm and starting to do that "croc spinning" thing that they do to tear things off of their prey.

Uneventful today though, a very professional presentation all around. I love how they get people to throw money at them so that they can make it part of the act. That's money in the croc's mouth, if it isn't perfectly clear in the pictures.

I got some video too, maybe I'll make the huge investment of time to put some up in a few days.

Rare Cat Pix

Went to the Crocodile Farm today and saw . . . a jaguar! And a handsome fellow he was, too. And a tiger! Lots of them actually, this I believe is a young one, maybe a year or so, on the small side with huge paws. Too close for comfort sometimes, they were. For only six dollars they would take your picture with your hands on a tiger, a full sized tiger that didn't look even a little bit drugged. He was chained to a D-ring in the floor, which I know would piss me off. No! But thank you so much for the offer.

The other feline is a fellow traveler at the home of a friend of mine, dining on the remains of the seafood at our Christmas party.

I'd hate to have the only blog on the 'Net with no cat pix.