@MelMScow@mas.to avatar

MelMScow

@MelMScow@mas.to

Australian born, living in Montreal, Canada. Work largely with words -- print, film, TV -- and value them highly. Preoccupied in recent years with the raising of endlessly amusing children.

Life upended by this never-ending pandemic. Currently homeschooling my youngest due to unmanageable school environment.

Enthusiasms: excellent TV (The Leftovers; Boardwalk Empire; Deadwood; almost anything British). Music, all kinds. Occasional (but zesty!) knitter. Nature.

Less Covid, please.

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pussreboots, to bookstodon
@pussreboots@sfba.social avatar

Five stars: Club Microbe by Elise Gravel (2024), also published as Le Fan Club Microbe in French is a nonfiction picture book about the smallest living things.

https://pussreboots.com/blog/2024/comments_05/club_microbe.html

@bookstodon

MelMScow,
@MelMScow@mas.to avatar

@pussreboots @bookstodon If you're interested (and, of course, if you don't already know) Elise Gravel has a number of books about the natural world and they're all quite wonderful. Other 'Fan Club' books address mushrooms and 'Des petites bêtes'. She also has a series of books on insects. Many of them are freely accessible (in French, with free membership) at www.bibliothequedesameriques.com

MelMScow, to random
@MelMScow@mas.to avatar

The over Montreal seeming to channel a Doctor Who title sequence.

The greenish-gray light of the aurora appears to swirl around a centre point that is reminiscent of the eye of a hurricane.

MelMScow, to random
@MelMScow@mas.to avatar

I'm fairly certain my teenager meant well when he poured me a glass of wine and told me that, of all the family, I was most deserving of alcoholism.

AnnaAnthro, to Poutine
@AnnaAnthro@mastodon.social avatar

Ohh lord - The Montreal airport mascot is a large bowl of !

She (yes it’s gendered - la poutine!) is called YULtine, YUL is the airport code and its very first mascot.

https://www.yulexpress.com/en/2024/03/welcome-to-yultine-yuls-very-first-mascot/

MelMScow,
@MelMScow@mas.to avatar

@AnnaAnthro Do mature, functional societies really do these things?

MelMScow, to random
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I've been sitting here with a glass of wine, trying to isolate the moment at which society (in this part of the world) started sliding inexorably towards a state of unadulterated shittiness. And I've determined that it all began when the bedbugs started showing up. The bedbugs were an advance guard. They were a harbinger of doom. I'm blaming the bedbugs.

MelMScow, to baking
@MelMScow@mas.to avatar

Apple custard tart for Easter.

One of these days I'll figure out how to adequately make concentric circles using apple slices.

MelMScow, to random
@MelMScow@mas.to avatar

My smallpox vaccine scar is on the back of my thigh because my mother didn't want my arm to be marred when I wore ballgowns, and I cannot think of a more hilarious misapprehension of the future.

MelMScow, to random
@MelMScow@mas.to avatar

Through a strange quirk of estate law, my 95-year-old mother-in-law has just inherited a gleaming new Ford F-150. We desperately want a photo of her in it before it's sold on, but can't figure out how to get her up into the cab.

MelMScow, to random
@MelMScow@mas.to avatar

I have every sympathy for Americans who are alarmed and affronted by the CDC's removal of the five-day isolation guidance. By contrast, though, can anyone in Canada even recall the last time we were offered official guidelines in this regard?

MelMScow, to random
@MelMScow@mas.to avatar

Had an appointment with an associate who complained he was feeling ill subsequent to an event we both attended on the weekend (I masked; he did not). People have not absorbed the lessons of the pandemic, he lamented. Shouldn't we know to stay home when sick, he opined.... all while he sat, unmasked, in his hermetically sealed office beside the medical-grade HEPA filter he purchased in 2021 (now unplugged and gathering dust) while I (aggressively masked) shifted uncomfortably in my seat. Surreal.

MelMScow, to random
@MelMScow@mas.to avatar

My kid just referred to landlords as 'small-penised apartment vampires' and I was forced to concede that he made some good points.

MelMScow, to random
@MelMScow@mas.to avatar

The hidden history of 'Hand Talk', a North American lingua franca.

https://www.vox.com/videos/23075393/hand-talk-pisl-missing-chapter-sign-language

MelMScow, to random
@MelMScow@mas.to avatar

I have inadvertently raised a teen-aged Lebowski -- a Small Lebowski, if you will -- and I'm torn between lighting a fire under his ass and encouraging him to embrace his inner Dude.

MelMScow,
@MelMScow@mas.to avatar

@johnefrancis He's currently walking around the house in his boxers and an unbelted robe. You're describing his dream holiday.

MelMScow,
@MelMScow@mas.to avatar

@johnefrancis I'm already subsidising his curling career. That's the appropriate Canadian substitute, isn't it?

BlackAzizAnansi, to random
@BlackAzizAnansi@mas.to avatar

So did covid just do a number on everyone's ability to think critically?

MelMScow,
@MelMScow@mas.to avatar

@BlackAzizAnansi Either that or it revealed a shortcoming that had heretofore been hidden.

MelMScow, to random
@MelMScow@mas.to avatar

The irony is that those of us railing against Covid are actually the hopeful ones. Everyone else is just engaging in nihilism without acknowledging it.

MelMScow, to random
@MelMScow@mas.to avatar

Have been playing Pandemic with the progeny over the holidays, which has left me wondering how the population at large could reconcile the goals of the game with our current real life predicament -- or their own individual actions.

MelMScow, to random
@MelMScow@mas.to avatar

It strikes me that the optics on this are... not good.

'The day after the appointment of the first Indigenous person to occupy the position of lieutenant governor in Quebec, the national assembly voted unanimously for the abolition of this office.'

https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/quebec-government-votes-to-abolish-the-office-of-lieutenant-governor-1.6679414

MelMScow, to random
@MelMScow@mas.to avatar

I pried three whole croissants from the jaws of my hell hound during our evening walk. Each time I extracted one, he uncovered another. No wonder he likes snow: he is under the impression that it magically conjures up baked goods.

MelMScow, to Dogs
@MelMScow@mas.to avatar

Some are genetically programmed to reach the exact height required to stare plaintively over the edge of the dinner table.

It's practically breed standard.

MelMScow, to random
@MelMScow@mas.to avatar

Someone might've warned me that having kids later would result in their teenage years aligning with my menopause.

MelMScow, to random
@MelMScow@mas.to avatar

Hoping some kind Covid-cautious types might advise:

Any suggestions as to a respirator appropriate for ice sports? My teen is trying out curling and finds the condensation build-up in his KN95 off-putting. My thought was to buy him an elastomeric (probably a Breathe), but not sure whether this will ameliorate or worsen the problem.

Thank you, oh knowledgeable and wise ones!

MelMScow, to random
@MelMScow@mas.to avatar

David Lynch teaches you to cook quinoa.

https://www.openculture.com/2023/10/david-lynch-teaches-you-to-cook-his-quinoa-recipe-in-a-strange-surrealist-video.html

MelMScow, (edited ) to random
@MelMScow@mas.to avatar

I find it fascinating that no one mentions Covid until someone else confesses to having it, at which point everyone and their dog chimes in to affirm how horrendous it is and to offer advice as to how to handle extreme and bizarre symptoms. People are just silently waiting for a socially acceptable excuse to discuss it.

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