December 20th

PLANET EARTH

I'm in the middle of watching the BBC series Planet Earth. It's okay, worth the price of the rental. Very good cinematography, the scenery shots are awesome, the animal segments are entertaining and enlightening.

One episode was simply titled Caves. It's misnamed. It should have been called Bat Shit and Bird Spit. It has a whole sequence with a humongous mound of what they delicately refer to as “bat droppings” which is covered with cockroaches that are dining on the guano. Come on! It's bat shit, smothered in bugs. I need to know about this because...? And, does this give us some sort of insight into the origin of the phrase “bat shit crazy”?

And then they had a bit about cave swifts, and the delicate little nests they make on the cave walls. It turns out that their nests are the main ingredient in Bird's nest soup and they are made of bird spit.

I guess after learning this I should be very thankful that I've never eaten bird's nest soup. I always thought that it was made with noodles that looked like a bird's nest or something. I never imagined that it was made from solidified bird saliva.

WEDDING THANK YOU'S

I hear that it's quite trendy to have a web site for your wedding. The proposal, the planning, pictures of the big day, etc. can all be put on the Internet for the whole world to see, even people who don't know you. Although I don't know why people who don't know you would be at all interested in viewing your on line wedding album. Well, unless it's like the one that a friend sent me the link to. It was quite amusing. The joining of people so obviously in love with themselves that it's hard to imagine that they truly loved each other, although narcissism can be a shared tie that binds I suppose. The usual drivel-photos, gift suggestions (bottles of wine that STARTED at $40 each), tales of how they met. And a page to thank people. Some of them I understood-the person who introduced them, the wedding planner, their deceased fathers. And, their “colon health” provider. Perhaps a really good BM every morning is the secret to a good marriage.

NEW FOSTER DOG

Meet Donner. Or Jessie. I guess he has two names. I was told to name him so I picked Donner. Then it turns out that he was already on the website as Jessie. I guess it doesn't really matter, the new owners will name him whatever they want to. Although, I think that Donner is a much better name than Jessie. I just call him FlufferNutter anyway.