Random thoughts and observations

KFC is perhaps the only - no, it is for sure - the only fast food that tastes better after it has been in the fridge. Like ten times better.

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In the wake of national catastrophes - natural, social, political, economic - when great cities are desolate of their human activity; leftover testaments to pillage and riot, and many neighborhoods are ghettoes, the one place I'd definitely not want to be, not even for one night with a little campfire, would be Disneyland. Can you imagine how horrifying a place it would be, with the spreads of multi-level parkades, rising completely silent and empty on a fallow night; or Mickey's Toontown, with not even a rat stirring in the moon spots, and the kind of padded density that it doesn’t even give back to you your own echo? It would be the kind of ironical weird that would make the bare-bones metal of an underground bomb shelter feel genuinely cozy.

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Where I was helping my boss to build his back deck, on the freezing north side of his house, there is a pasture of goats to one side of the yard; there are also two llamas. The lady who tends to them was there inside the goat's shelter. Boss said to me she told him that an hour ago one mother goat gave birth to one baby goat. And then, just now, fourteen came out.

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My understanding is that Americans love doughnuts - to such a degree that the pride and place and devotion that Canada gives to its own doughnut/coffee temple, Tim Horton's, looks positively effete and limp-wristed in comparison. That's saying something.

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The notion that the faster you go, the less fast it seems you can get, is true to a capital T. Look at drivers on the road. They are completely insane in their mindless intent upon filling in the space of road's stretch ahead of them instantly, which is what they perceive to be normal speed. Ever hear of horse and carriage? That's regular pace. Even if you're going 30 in your car, you are still getting ahead.

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One time I was working at a lawn and garden equipment store and there was a man working there by the name of Jack. He was a Brit, with the full-fledged accent. And something of the sharp, biting attitude. I was in the back shop assembling something. There were two mechanics working there. Jack worked mostly in the front. He would come into the back with papers in his hands and his face looking down at the papers as he walked, with the kind of stress that finds its outlet in a sort of supra-organization and the blocking out of all distractions with tunnel vision, asking one of the two mechanics where so-and-so's lawn mower was, and if it was ready, because they were coming to pick it up shortly. So, I was there assembling one time, and he comes into the back with the papers in his hands and looking at them as he walked. They had a stereo system that played music in the front of the store and in the back. Presently there was a Shania Twain song playing, one in which she's singing about how she's "thinking 'bout Elvis". Jack comes into back just at the moment when Shania's singing, "…I'm thinking 'bout EEElviis". Jack stops in his tracks. Looks sharply up from his sucking whirlpool of papers and says to no one in particular: "Elvis? Elvis? Who gives a shit about Elvis? Danny, you got that lawn mower ready yet, the man's coming in half an hour…"

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Never was there a time when I caught a fish, and upon reeling it out of the water, wasn't shocked, rather somewhat scared by what I caught.

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Fog is my least favourite kind of weather. It goes against my instinct for seeking clarity - especially the clarity to be found concentrated in leaves and puddles on darkest rainy days.

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Have you ever looked and looked at a tree until it became a naked message about glorying God, on several levels, so that its fruits, even its leaves, were mere byproducts in its ascent - and not the tree's ends?