Attack of the Giant Cephalopod

Cthulhu emerges...

On the beach at Port Renfrew sits this piece of driftwood looking vaguely like a giant octopus with its tentacle-like roots.

You might be thinking: "Well that's ridiculous. Octopuses live in sea water. They can't crawl around on land."

Guess again... and try not to think of one of these critters crawling out of the deep looking for a meal.

Momento mori

Dust to dust

"Momento mori" is Latin for "remember that you must die". Legend says that slaves accompanying generals on victory parades in ancient Rome would whisper these words in their ears along the way. It was meant to remind them that their lives would have little significance in history after they had passed away. It served to keep the commanders from being consumed by their own hubris.

In another context the phrase is a reminder that each passing year brings us closer to our end. 

The start of a new year is an ideal time to consider whether we will make the best of life in each day, or waste it on the mundane and the inconsequential. Will we embrace life with gusto, or merely pass through it?

Choose your fate...

Secret identity is secret

Raybans... for when the day is bright and the Knight is Dark...

So, you're a superhero and you decide you just wanna chill with the crowds at the outdoor market. But how to mingle without being recognized and mobbed by your adoring public?

Put on a pair of slick Raybans, of course!

Isn't it ironic?

Lucky Fortune?  Not so much...

As I walked around downtown Victoria recently, it was grim to see how many retail stores had shuttered as a result of the COVID shutdown.

Some had notices that they intended to re-open as soon as they could, but there were a few that announced that they were closing permanently.

I'm not sure what the eventual fate of the Lucky Fortune Tattoo Studio is. It was papered over and gated, but the neon light suggests that there is still hope for it.

The times they are a changing...

Radioactive green disinfectant... I'd prefer wine, thanks...

It used to be that we were greeted with a gift basket of wine -- and maybe some chocolates to go with it -- when we checked into fancy hotels to celebrate a special occasion.

Recently we checked into our mid-island vacation condo and were bemused to be greeted with an entirely new kind of welcome basket. It contained some disinfecting spray and cleaning products so that we could sanitize hard surfaces in our suite during our stay.

😒

A Flock of Eagles

A cloud appears above your head 

A beam of light comes shining down on you 

Shining down on you

-- "I Ran"

We tried to tempt this young eagle with a freshly dead crab. We tossed it over to him and s/he cautiously approached it and gave it a couple of exploratory pecks.

Maybe it was all the work involved to get at the meat when there were easier pickings about that deterred the bird.

BTW, a group of eagles is known more specifically as a "convocation" of eagles.

Very pun-ny!

A big chair for the lady...

After walking around the Calgary Zoo for hours last summer my wife stopped to sit for awhile.

She was a little tired.

Sign of the times

Special parking for special cars...

This was just too much!

At our local mall I was looking for a parking spot when I came across three spots marked like you see above. Exclusive parking for low emission vehicles only?!

Special parking for the disabled... I can get on board with that. Special parking for pregnant women... I can sorta get onboard with that. (Our grand-mother and great-grandmothers were made of sterner stuff... pregnancies didn't slow them down.)

Special parking for families with small children? Uhm, why? Kids have legs and more energy to burn than most adults.

But special parking just because you happen to own a politically-correct type of vehicle. Nope, I wasn't having that. I took my cue from the dual-exhaust Nissan parked in one of the spaces and parked my seven-passenger van in the space next to it in an shared act of defiance.

Fun with feces?

Worst toy trend ever...

Ugh.

How else to describe this bizarre collection of poop and toilet -themed games recently seen in the toy section of our local London Drugs?

As described by their respective boxes:

Toilet Trouble: Spin the toilet paper roll and flush, but watch out... you might get sprayed!
Plunge It: Fart sound F/X
Flush'N'Frenzy: Push the Plunger 'Til the poop pops up!

Ewww.

C'mon shake your body, baby / Do the Conga...

Gloria Estevan knows what it's all about..

Clowning around with the local artwork in Deadwood...

Doubtful

Uhm... I'm gonna say no...

In Deadwood we saw this t-shirt in a lot of the local tourist shops. We weren't sure if it was meant to be ironic or not. We've learned to keep our political opinions to ourselves when south of the border.

Cold Day at Sidney

Grey skies don't stop the crowds from coming...

A couple of weeks ago on New Years Day, I went up to nearby Sidney BC to watch the Polar Bear Swim. It takes place in the ocean... which IS pretty cold but not as much as you might think.

Ocean temperatures here typically range in the 5 to 6 degree C mark. You don't have to break through ice the way you do for Polar Bear Swims in the lakes and rivers of eastern Canada.

That still didn't stop the crowds in Sidney from squealing like little girls and running out of the water as fast as they could after their short sprint into the water.

After the hard work is done...

Chillin' in the hot tub with some buds and brews...

... it's Miller Time!©

Grisly remains

A grizzly on the go...

The Grizzly Bear and Wolf Discovery Center on the east boundary of Yellowstone Park is the only bear-safe food container certification testing facility in the United States.

Yes, that's a thing. Before any food storage container can advertise itself as bear safe, it must first be able to withstand a 90 minute full-on bear bashing. The containers are baited and scented with bear attractants and then tossed into the pen with the big bruins.

The image below shows the remains of various containers that did not pass the test.

Staff there told us that some of the smarter bears figure out how to open containers by simply manipulating the locking mechanism with their paws. Most of them though resort to the tried and true method of simply smashing the hell out of the container.

Food grade but not grizzly grade...

Get out!

The smallest one of the bunch...

Our little 15-foot trailer is frequently surrounded by much longer and luxurious motorhomes in a lot of the RV camp sites that we stay in. We joke that we must annoy our neighbours because we are bringing down the local property values.

I woke one morning to find that someone had left this dead bird on our power box. We laughingly figured that someone was leaving us a warning to take our little pop-up and get out of Dodge.

At least it wasn't a horse's head...

There's a message here... I think.

Companions

BFFs at the Shaw Ocean Discovery Centre in Sidney, BC...

When you and bae are so tight that you are comfortable with each other's silence...

Men of Bronze

A contest forged in bronze...

Another view of "Attitude Adjustment", a popular sculpture by artist Austin Barton, that can be found on the main street of Joseph OR. It's probably the most photographed of the sculptures of Joseph.

A man's best friend...
next to another man

Further down the street is this statue. It pays tribute to the days when a half-naked muscular man with a solid moustache wearing only leather chaps could give his dog a bone without anyone judging him for it.