Laurel

Remember the pure delight of the goose game?
Well, here’s another opportunity to mess everything up as a jerk of a bird. The beautiful, warbling, terrifyingly territorial Aussie magpie.

my call to action here is two-fold:

1) let your outrage towards the cruel indignity of this genocidal campaign radicalize you further to the left.

2) let this injustice motivate you to fight for the lives of trans kids. embrace solidarity & revolutionary optimism. when we fight, we win.

Yes, hello, is that God? Yeah, hi. I have a complaint. You gave me this brain that’s designed for finding berries and avoiding lions and now people are ‘just circling back’ to see if we can ‘move the needle’ on ‘key initiatives’? NONE of those things are berries.

Six welcome cat figurines on a wooden sill under the words SUSHI & RAMEN on the window glass. Each cat is a different colour.

Went for ramen in a new spot yesterday, when family favourite Kenzo was closed. Lovely barley and corn tea, nice gyoza, hearty Orochong style soup and adorable welcome kitty rainbow by the door.

There’s that, too, but I learned all that after I gave up trying to read the book people kept raving about.
The dismissive way he wrote about people around him gave me the ick.

Thoreauly frustrated with the amount of times well-meaning friends said I’d love Walden. Why, because I grew up eating foraged puffballs & milkweed seeds? Because I like the company of the nature neighbours?
When I finally read it, I got increasingly disgusted until I gave up reading about 1/2 way.

I’m the donkey, tired of all the bad news honking at me

Sound on

Grackles! #SpringMigration

😳 🤯 🚨 “From 2020, Ontario began generating a summary of all children who died under the care of a CAS, with an open child welfare file or whose file had been closed in the past year.
The data showed, on average, a child who had interacted with welfare within the past year died every three days.”

The biggest moth I’ve ever seen was a Luna moth which landed on my folks’ living room window one night… it was the most astonishing creature. Utterly gorgeous.
This moth is even bigger?! Whoa!

Ooh, that’s exciting! Looks good for that to me… amazing!

I’m so sorry. I honestly hadn’t realized the depth of what you were enduring.
If my (American) dad were still alive, he’d be apoplectic.

You had to WHAT?! 🤬😤

Good idea, I forgot! I usually use it for unknown new plants I meet.

A fuzzy beige shape, possibly egg case, on a red twig in a leafless tree. Background is blue sky and bokeh branches.

Same egg case, hand for scale. It’s the size of two fingers together.

Entomology friends and fellow nature nerds, a little help?
This is my teaching partner’s hand, and tree. What on earth made such a big cocoon/ootheca/egg sack?

I had to read this three times for it to sink in.
I got stuck on both parts of the conundrum…
“Since… teaching climatology puts me in danger of violating the ban on political speech” 😳🤯🤬
and:
“… I try to avoid student conversations about campus politics” 😖😮‍💨
I’m so angry for you. Furious.

Sunrise, traffic sounds and birdsong on this oddly warm day.

Brilliant sunrise sky over a schoolyard with melting patches of snow. The sky is vibrant with gold at the horizon and orangy-pink moving up to speckled pink and blue overhead.

The same sunrise moments later, zoomed in to capture the vibrant pink-orange light in the clouds.

One thing about the time change… I got to work early today so I saw the sunrise from my classroom windows. It blazed a hot pinkish-orange for a few minutes, up into candy floss clouds high above.

Gen X, also wondering if this was knowledge I was supposed to have.

That’s a win. I hope it was a good day.

I don’t care about the price of oil, I care that Iranians are being poisoned with toxic fumes. What the fuck is wrong with us?

I will not be running for mayor of Toronto I even asked my editor at the Star for a two-page spread to help readers understand the extent to which I am not running for mayor of Toronto.

Breaking news! I have my first opinion piece in the Toronto Star today! I got to make fun of John Tory AND make a joke about me playing for the Blue Jays, so it's safe to say that this was the most fun I've had writing something in a while. 💙 www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...

Have I got the perfect place for you to shop for your accompaniment… 🧵
bsky.app/profile/phil...

I saw Revenge of the Nerds (shudder) as a double-feature at the drive in. The other film was Rhinestone. I barely remember that one except that Dolly was charming.

Oooof.
At least I hated it then, too.
But my friends who wanted me to see it, invited me to the party to watch it with them (for their 20th time, or so) and got more and more angry and I pointed out how messed up it was?!
Yeah. I was not popular that night.
A killjoy since my teens 😁

Ugh… I felt like I was outside the glass looking in, as a teen in the 80s. I remember being horrified by that movie, but none of my friends were which meant I was made out to be a snob and a prude. Same with Grease.
But then again, my first movie crush was Christopher Walken (Deadzone) so I WAS odd.

Pssst @daanis.ca, did you feel that ripple in the force? See above…

Aww! Ours usually arrive on shore on the same day or the day after the red-winged blackbirds. This year, I saw blackbirds days ago in nearby lakeside parks, and finally on my local stretch of shore today. Here’s hoping the grackles are back tomorrow! I love those glossy goofballs.

OMG I’ve never been so excited about a book that doesn’t exist… yet.

Oh wow! Like mourning cloak butterflies, flittering around in the woods around snow piles and leaf litter on the first sunny days of spring. In fact, today would’ve been perfect for them.