• The smelt is a highly political fish, said to be closely allied to the grayling of the salmon family.

• One particular type of smelt, the candlefish is so fat at spawning time that you can stick a wick up its ass and burn it like a candle.
• When a smelt accidentally buys a cellphone with a camera because the zero broke on its old phone, the smelt smells trouble (with olfactory organs which are deep indentations with a smell-sensitive lining).
• After waiting in vain for an epiphany, the smelt will give up and go back to the store where it bought its Siemens C72 phone and ask how to get pictures it takes onto a computer, and will be told there is a cable that will do the trick, only it’s not in stock and the saleswoman doesn’t know when it’s coming in, could be in a week, could be tomorrow.
• No fool, the smelt in such a situation will go next door to another electronics shop and buy a cable.
• Unfortunately, no one tells the smelt that this particular cable only works on a PC with 500 mA USB ports, and it wastes an hour installing, deinstalling and reinstalling, deinstalling, downloading, unzipping, installing, deinstalling and reinstalling drivers on its work and home PCs before it reads the directions and checks and finds out that all computers to which it (the smelt) has access have 100 mA (actually more like 98) USB ports.
• The smelt will swear in such a situation that this is the last time it buys Fuxxor brand anything.
• Or anything with moveable parts, or containing copper for christssake.
• The smelt sometimes wonders what percentage of the gadget industry’s annual turnover can be attributed to consumers accidentally purchasing incompatible gadget accessories.
• Little is known about the smelt’s sense of taste. Its eating habits are sometimes destructive and cannibalistic.

Father: [Closing book, reaching to turn off light] And that’s why you should be a good girl and never, ever lie.
Gamma: Dad, look at me.
Father: I am looking at you.
Gamma: No, I mean directly at me. Straight-on.
Father: Like this, you mean?
Gamma: Yeah, I thought so. Your left eye is bigger than the other one.
Father: Bleener eye.
Gamma: What?
Father: I have bleener eye. That’s why I look brain-damaged in pictures.
Gamma: Heh. Bleener eye? It’s called bleener eye?
Father: Yeah, some people have one eye smaller than the other and that’s what you call it. How about now, are they the same size now?
Gamma: No. The left one’s still bigger.
Father: Hrm. Anyway. What were we talking about? Good night.
Gamma: Good night. And come check on me every…
Father: Every five minutes, sure. As always.

We celebrate St. Patrick’s Day by building a fire and telling this story to the kids before bed. How do you celebrate?

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The work of art should contain the seeds of its own destruction. This can be accomplished by presenting both sides of the story, in one way or another. Here, I do it by leaving comments open, at least until the spammers show up.

Also, there should be a narrative arc of some sort. Yesterday, in the performance that is my life, I hurt someone I love, not to mention broke my own heart by being a jerk in the morning, to which I plead frustrated booga-booga middle-aged male menopause freak out, and was in the evening restored by a hug from Beta.

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• Krill have more biomass than any other organism¹.

• The eyes of krill are high in vitamin A.
• Most krill glow in the dark, which makes you wonder how smart it is for them to hide from predators in the darkest depths of the ocean.
• When krill go to an electronics shop to purchase a cord for an Apple iBook, the saleswoman sells them a cord for an iPod, and although the krill inspect it in the store, they don’t notice the big letters on the box reading “iPod” until they get back to their office.
• Krill young have iPods, so it’s no big deal with the cord though.
• When krill, during the same visit to the electronics shop, also purchase a new cell phone because the zero on their old one broke, and they ask for a simple one with no doodads such as cameras, and the same saleswoman tells them, oh, sir, none of these cheap ones here have cameras, and they buy one, they later discover, messing around with the new phone while taking a train to Brno in the Czech Republic, that the new phone happens to have a camera after all, a crappy little one that they can’t figure out how to upload the pictures anywhere else but still; and the krill find the crappy little camera nifty in a retro way.
• Whereas humans can paint a bedroom with no more than two coats of paint and it looks okay, krill need two entire weekends, as well as an extra day during the week, and a total of eight coats: one coat of creamy yellow, three coats of dark red, two coats of transparent gold effect paint, another coat of dark red over that when they realize the transparent gold effect paint is never going to look good, and a sponged-on coat of opaque shiny gold paint over that.
• While sponging on the final coat of gold, male krill have no patience for female krill telling them they’re overdoing it with the gold. Luckily, adolescent krill thinks it looks okay.
• The average krill is 16 mm in length.
• Krill resent being mistaken for shrimp, which happens often, especially at cocktail parties.

¹You might want to double-check this particular fact before using it in a report for school.

What’s up with these sites with no content of their own, only a mass of links on some specific topic (and of course google ads or something)? Some “cello” site has linked me, har har, as has a “flower” site. Today I see a Christian (?) parenting site has linked a post I wrote back in November 2003 on the applicability of the CI4 T*rtur3 M4nu*L as a source of parenting advice. [low-quality screenshot in case it falls off their page]