My daughters have been making lots of cartoons lately on their Nintendo DSs.  Sometimes the Nintendo DSs drive me crazy, but I don’t mind them using them for creative purposes at all. 

They use a program called “Flipnote” to create cute little cartoons like these (click on the play button as opposed to the animations themselves):

And this one, which is more a combination of stop motion animation and rotoscoping:

Ever wonder what happened to the original Starbuck? (I mean the original BG Starbuck… not the Moby Dick Starbuck…)

Now we know:

Stepped into the park behind my backyard Wednesday morning and saw a short furred dog loping along about a hundred yards in front of me.  It had a very distinctive athletic lope, practically weightless, like it was running on the surface of the moon.

After a couple of seconds I realized this was no dog, it was a coyote.  I’d heard there was at least one around.  A few hundred yards to my right a man was walking a dog.  The man never noticed anything, but I could see his dog eyeing the coyote suspiciously as it disappeared into what passes for woods in these parts. 

The coyote was certainly the largest wild animal I’ve ever spotted around here.  It’s mostly wild rabbits I see in my yard and the park, that and squirrels of course.  Haven’t seen any rabbits recently; maybe the coyote has them all spooked… either that or eaten.  I assume if there’s one coyote there’s probably more, a family, or a pack.  From what I understand they’re a huge problem in the Durham region, eating up plenty of sheep and even cattle.  And, I expect, more than a few cats.

We don’t let our cats outdoors anymore, not after one of them got two bite marks on her derriere a couple of years ago.  I’ve always wondered what made those bites.  I expect if it was a coyote we would own one less cat now. 

Still, fine looking animal, the coyote, the one I saw.   A purebred, I would guess, from the looks of it, as opposed to one of the ones that I understand have been interbreeding with wolves for about the last eighty or ninety years in this area, creating a new breed of super-coyote they’re calling coywolves.    

Against which the roadrunner probably wouldn’t stand a chance.

Parents are visiting, not much time to blog. So until I return, here’s a little something to tide you over. I find myself watching it over and over again:

Never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet, and her Fish.

Which work of Shakespeare was the original quote from?

Get your own quotes:

(Thanks to Sherry D. Ramsey for pointing this one out…)

Talking to Laurence Stevenson today reminded me that I really need to keep this blog up.  My readership of two is counting on me.

Talking to someone else today reminded me of my favourite words.  Here’s a list of some off the top of my head:

1. Decimate

I was reminded of this one today when someone misused it.  “The department was decimated,” she said.  She might well have been right, but was it really reduced by a tenth?

2. Chomping

Another misused word.  People use it when they really mean “champing.”  As in  “He was really champing at the bit.”

3. Fireplace

It’s such a silly word, really.  “Where do you want this log?”  “Oh I dunno… why don’t you put it in the, uh, fire, um, place.  You know, the place with the fire.”

4. Limanouse

When I was a kid reading Ritchie Rich comics, I never looked closely enough at the word “limousine.”  I always read it as “limanouse.”  I still think that limanouse ought to be a word.  No idea what it should mean, though.

5. Jus de pamplamouse

Just love the sound of that word.  Love the juice, too.

6. Cart a puce

That one too.  I heard it once working on a French radio show.  I’ve never heard it since, though, and any French person I’ve asked about it denies that it’s actually a word.  I think it’s supposed to mean banking card, or the like.

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Just in case you haven’t seen it yet…

Yes, we turned our lights out.

Did you?

And we all went out and walked around the block. Maybe a third of the houses we passed had their lights out.

Maybe it was my imagination, but the stars seemed to shine a little brighter. The girls loved it… said it was like a campout.

We might do it next week too, just for fun.