That’s 646 pound of catfish right there. Grizzly Bear-Size, says National Geographic.

* * *

A cancelled wedding in Everett, Washington turns out OK. The non-bride and her parents decide to invite homeless people to their already-paid-for reception!

* * *

Fauja Singh is 94 years young. He started running marathons at age 81, and has done 7 to date.

* * *

Bill Cosby (who has been accused of drugging and fondling women) plays the role of a bitter, strict and loveless dad to the entire African-American population - again.

* * *

Surprise surprise. The Washington Post documents an audit revealing how “TSA Lost Control of Over $300 Million Spent by Contractor to Hire Airport Screeners After 9/11″. Improper budget spending includes these line-items:

· $1,540 to rent 14 extension cords at $5 each per day for three weeks at the Wyndham Peaks Resort and Golden Door Spa in Telluride, Colo.

· $8,100 for elevator operators at the Marriott Marquis in Manhattan.

* * *

And last but not least, that’s one cute, laid-back puppy dog:

Some unlucky character on a Continental Airlines flight apparently spent much of the time composing this seven-page complaint illustrating the nastiness that was seat #29E (via Boing Boing).

Click to read the full document.

There is some question as to the legitimacy of the complaint, that it might be a hoax or a joke. I don’t see how this is a joking matter, really. This victim’s description is fantastically hilarious - I couldn’t stop laughing while reading it - because it’s true. Matt and I experienced nearly the same thing, but I think it was on a United flight.

Through Memphis.

A few years ago we flew from Vancouver to Cincinnati with a stop in Memphis. There was a long stopover so we decided to check out the airport stores and grab some food. Aside from being bombarded by every Elvis knick-knack imaginable for sale at the shops, the food available was notable for its sameness. Pulled pork sandwiches, pork-butt this and that, and pork ribs. We chose to wait for the airplane food.

When time came for lunch service we had a choice between pork-butt and pork-shoulder. I can’t remember if we ate or not, but what happened after lunch was pure torture. I think our seats were in row 36 - the last row at the back, directly next to the lav.

The asses kept coming, and they weren’t delicate or forgiving. OBESE and RUMBLING asses were bumping, fully-loaded up against us, in a hurry to empty themselves of their unanimous pork lunches. And they lingered in the lav as long as they could. Everytime the door opened a new waft of stench attacked us in our seats, and it was disgusting. With a full flight there was no escape, and the lineup of people did not end until the seatbelt light came on for descent.

I will never forget it. That’s why I know the Seat Complaint is no hoax.

It’s a wonderful thing that Ithaca has several works of art in public spaces, primarily along the Commons. My favorite piece is a 3-foot bronze man in a suit with dragonfly butterfly wings, he appears ready to take flight from the planter box he sits in near Tioga and Seneca. It’s called Businessman in touch with Nature and was dedicated by NYSEG.

He has a new buddy a few feet away from him - an enormous rusted-metal armadillo calf that I haven’t stopped to take a close look at yet, and it’s one of several new (metal) art pieces that have been planted over the past couple of weeks.

At the entrance to DeWitt Park you can’t miss this:

Forgive me (if you are the artist) for questioning how the positioning of this work has any benefit to the community or artistic merit as it stands. At first sight I think anyone would see this as an awkward installation: it’s parked smack in the middle of a high-traffic pedestrian spot, creating an obstacle preventing free movement through the area; sightlines from the adjacent park benches are disrupted; and in a college town with poor night-lighting it won’t be long before that rusty beak makes hazardous contact with an eye - its height is actually at my own eye-level and I’m nervous about passing within a few feet of it. To add insult, the context of its predatory expression tells me to run far away, as fast as I can run. Not ‘Welcome to DeWitt Park, come hang out here’. Where it stands this bird is not art, it’s a nemesis to the pedestrian.

Public art is always a topic for debate and discussion.

Also new to the Commons is a pocked, hammered-metal sculpture of a woman seated against a wall. I’ll snap a pic of that one soon, and save my comments til then…

If you have a blog, go help a guy with his PhD research!

We had a whirlwind Saturday preparing an Indian meal for 15 people! It was a lot of work and involved deep frying countless pakoras and samosas and pan-frying what seemed like a million parathas.

This endeavor started a few weeks ago when I read a post seeking Indian catering for a party on one of the Ithaca newsgroups I subscribe to (ithaca.general, ithaca.marketplace & cornell.marketplace). Since Indian is my favorite cuisine and I cook it often (and well), Matt encouraged me to respond. I prepared some samples for them to try and that was successful enough to get the gig. I thought it quite hilarious that a couple of Canadians were about to cater Indian food for a party of people from India, and I think it was equally entertaining for the party people!

They wanted vegetarian dishes, so here’s the rundown of the menu we made:

Pakoras with cauliflower, carrots & onions
Samosas with potato, peas & corn

Raita
Apple Chutney
Mint Chutney

Spinach & Chaana Dal
Mutter Paneer
Aloo Gobi

Palau Rice with saffron & peas
Parathas

I spent a couple of days preparing what I could beforehand such as making paneer, the Indian cheese, and cleaning, chopping and peeling lots of veggies. By the time we should have been out the door to deliver, we were still frying last-minute parathas - it was organized mayhem but I’m still dizzy from the experience.

The good news is that all the Indian dishes were a hit, especially the samosas & pakoras.

The bad is since it was a birthday party we also made a chocolate cake and unfortunately that didn’t go over so well. It seems they tossed it out actually, which is embarrassing, but hey we got all the tough stuff right!

Another (brief) thunderstorm, another show:

Somehow I’ve got material for yet another bird post. Upstate NY is bird-crazy and there’s an abundance of birds here, so there you go. To prove my case I could now link to a bunch of birding sites and mail lists (which I actually subscribed to for a short time until the infighting got out of hand) but just trust me on this.

Some recurring themes are taking shape when it comes to my personal relationship with birds: Again this particular story involves an impending birdy death (like here); and uncanny coincidence (like here).

Very early yesterday morning I carried the laundry down the block, started three loads, then headed toward Gimme! for a coffee. A few feet ahead on the sidewalk I saw what I first thought was a large, pinkish flower petal, and for whatever reason made a point not to step on it. Hmm, that was strange-looking, so I glanced back at it and thought that actually looks something like a funny-shaped slug. I closely studied it for a few more seconds, realized it was a breathing, living thing, and what looked like a little distended tummy took shape. Suddenly I had an idea what this curious thing was…. a freshly-hatched bird left to die on the sidewalk! YUCKY.

I bee-lined home to grab my camera so I could now share what I saw. Back on my way down the block I also mentioned this little phenomenon to a woman walking her dog (a well-mannered Jack (FYI now Parson) Russell). I invited her to come take a look because I didn’t know if anything could possibly be done to save it, and I thought it only right to share the burden of my discovery with someone else. She said her hardcore vegan friend would just kill it. The alternative, which she did, was to take a couple of twigs and move it off the sidewalk.

Now for the kind-of-gross but fascinating part - PICTURES!
Click only if you really really want to:

About an hour later I walked by and the bird was gone! What became of it?

Moving on to the bizarre coincidence. When I returned home I transferred the pics, then browsed me some internet. Awhile back, like 6 weeks ago, I entered a draw for some art at Art Prostitute so I decided to check in to see if a winner has been announced and as luck would have it no, not yet.

But this image on their site looked freakishly familiar to me:

And when I visited this Site of the Month, I saw more than a few images of dead baby birdies, like this one which is more developed than the above.

Weird coincidence, no?

Finally we’re getting some rain after a solid week of an epic heatwave. I was watching TV when the thunderstorm started at about 7-ish, got up to shut some windows and sat back down. About 10 minutes later a National Weather Service buzz came on warning of severe thunderstorms coming through. A few minutes late but hey, it’s a Syracuse channel, so I guess it was relevant timing for them.

At this moment I’m listening to our neighbour next door practicing cello on his back porch. It sounds particularly beautiful with the rain as backdrop - which is perhaps what inspired him, because I haven’t heard him playing before.

Most urbanites when they want to set up camp, leave the city for a rendezvous in nature.

Not these guys (links to pics). Last night they set up tents in Times Square, and didn’t get booted by the cops until this morning:

Folks from all over the world stopped and talked to us to find out what we were doing. Some bought us supplies (we’d made a pact not to leave our traffic island until morning) and two even brought pizza. Many hung out for a while and left us their names and addresses. A few are pictured below.

We spun stories about being there to be first in line for Jessica Simpson tickets (one group almost joined us) or claimed to be photographers for North Face taking product photos in the urban landscape (the cops seemed to buy that one.) But people just seemed to love the idea that someone was actually camping out in the middle of times square for the heck of it.

Would you do this? I’m betting their tale makes it to the New York Times, which would result in some fantastic publicity for one of the campers, Zack Klein, who is a partner in some very profitable (though tacky, perhaps) web ventures.

So how do you like it? The new blog design, that is.

There’s a whole lotta changes going on behind the scenes, and some functionality isn’t up to snuff yet. Life in Ithaca is now powered by Wordpress, a switch that should have happened a long time ago.

On the surface migrating from Movable Type to Wordpress seems kind of easy, but lots can go wrong. The only real trouble I’m having now is ironing out the RSS2 and Atom feeds. If anyone out there knows how to modify the feeds to publish an entire entry instead of just an excerpt, I’d appreciate you sharing your secret mojo with me. I’d think it should be simple but I can’t locate proper documentation to guide the way to reaching feed bliss. I know you want it :O)

Also, a few of the wonders of this blog are still missing. Photo albums and other goodies are on the way very shortly.