My Meerkat Experience at Mogo Zoo

From J: the best Christmas present EVER :) Mogo Zoo, NSW, Australia offers various Animal Encounters, one of which is a Meerkat Experience. All of these photographs and the short clip were taken by zoo keeper Bek/c while I enjoyed feeding my favourite little peeps. Bek/c took heaps of photos for me so I'm only including some.




[sings]Getting to knooooow you,
getting to feed you stuff from a bucket.



The dominant meerkat of the five boys spent most of the time with his head in the bucket except when meal worms were brought out...




... and put on my head, shoulder and lap.


It didn't hurt, but it took a bit of getting used to having this little critter run his paws and claws through my hair. Their claws are very long but dulled by digging and foraging.


Call me back later, I'm feeding the meerkats!


My favourite photo of us.


Their fur is a not as soft as a cat's but not as coarse as some adult dogs. Afterwards my hands smelt spicy and earthy - sort of like curry powder or maybe tumeric.


Keeper Bek/c said this was the cutest pic she had ever taken of this little chap. He is the oldest meerkat of the five, at nine years old. He was once the head male. Not anymore, he sat apart while the others did their thing. So sweet though as you can see by this pic.


I don't remember his name but here he is again...


...and here too.


The four amigos sun bake in a line. Apparently the keeper had never seen them lying in a line like that before.



Please M'am, may I have some more?

Precious little pygmy marmosets

At Mogo Zoo we were admiring the agility and cuteness of the pygmy marmosets. A boy of about 8 walks by and excitedly asks his older brother of about 12
"Can we order one of those?!"
"Yeah sure - they're six million dollars!"

Happy Hedgehog hovering habove hundercarriage whipes.

At Tullamarine airport, ladies' toilet near large cargo deposit area, just above toilet paper dispenser in 2nd or 3rd cubicle on left ... I found the above and couldn't help myself but add to it (with water based pen of course).

Honesty is the best policy...

At Moruya Saturday Market. Small child to presumably his dad.
"Where's Mum?"
"I dunno... Probably ran away 'cause you're so annoying."

Lose Xkg with this weird old trickery...

In my adverts column on FaceBook the ubiquitus diet ad read 'Dr Oz - Lose 6kg/week' and something about this 'using this weird trick' nothing odd about that. When I go to do my regular 'hide all by this advertiser' the advertiser listed for this ad is 'Mochi Ice creams'. The ad I hid before that was for a dieting whatever but the advertiser had the word Veterinary within the company name. Weird or what?

Also has anyone every clicked on one fo these ads because they thought it looked good? No, really? These ads don't work? Who would have thought it...

"When are you going to have kids/get married?"

Christmas and Boxing Days: Food was good; Questions about 'When are you gonna have kids/get married?' not good. Especially since they came from people I barely know. One I don't even know her name and it was the first time I met her. My simple, polite answer is that I don't want kids. For the first person this sufficed. For the others I got a talking to that one day I might feel differently. I doubt it. Why this assumption that I want kids? I've known what I want for as long as I've been old enough to make that decision. I don't feel an innate desire to have them, neither does my partner and why is the activity or otherwise of my womb anyone else's f***ing business anyway?

It's like asking a person who owns a dog why they don't want to own a parrot instead. 'Your biology will change and you will want a parrot. When you're older you won't be so lonely with a parrot.' What if I just don't want a parrot? Why are you so hell bent on me joining your parrot owning club? I'm very happy with my dog thanks. Grrr.

I wasn't ready to be barraged as I was this afternoon. Usually simply saying I don't want kids is enough. Now that I've been turning the subject over in my head for a few hours now and ranting with my partner at least now I'm prepared for the next time it comes up. It will. I don't understand why some of my aquaintances have felt the need to bring it up more than once.

Next time I'm asked that I'll politely answer back
'Why do you assume that I want kids? I don't. It's my choice as an adult to make. I'd thank you to respect that and drop this subject'.

Fruit Platter

My first fruit platter ever. I made it for my Lovely One as he slept in this weekend because he's worth it. Best, tastiest pineapple I've ever had. I called it The Temple of the Sun. The watermelon shards and wedges are the walls with the golden pineapple in the centre representing the radiant sun. The berries are the worshippers. I'm not trying to create profoundity into my fruit platter, but it's the thought process behind its construction. My Lovely One did note that the watermelon looked a bit 'like Stone Henge or something' where upon I divulged the secret title, so the thought was not lost on my subject :)





We couldn't finish it though, and had to save some for later. It's not fancy fruit carving but I would have researched it a bit before attempting that. I did my produce justice, it was fun to do and a pleasure for us to eat. I got a couple of interesting detail shots as well.



I call this one the March of the Cherries.

Hopper on a grape vine.

This wingless little chap was about 15mm long and so cute! The thing I like about critters like this one is not only are they exquisitely fine but because of his eye structure you can clearly see that he was looking at me.

This particular insect appears to have basic compound eyes made up of many ommatidium which allow a wide and accuate field of vision. Being flightless but a hopper he wouldn't have more than 1000 ommatidium. A housefly has about 4000. Flying insects which rely on strong eyesight include the butterfly, praying mantis and dragonfly. In the case of the butterfly - up to 17000 ommatidium - they need to probe precisely into flowers while keeping an eye out for predators. For the praying mantis and dragonfly - both 30000 - they have ultra compound eyes to enable their formidable hunting skills.

Deviant 'Lego' street art

Each 'Lego' figure holds a different weapon of deviance. The biggest one appears to have been holding a molatov cocktail. There's also a meat cleaver, axe, knife, chair, chain, ice pick, cane ala Clockwork Orange film version, broken bottle, two sticks of lit dynamite.

Fellowship of the True Blue, Southern Cross Son, Manly Man, Ring

Imagine this being read out by an ocker, beer swilling, football following, 'true blue' Aussie bloke. Better still, if you can do the accent, read it out aloud. If it was an 'Authentic reproduction of the original 1854 flag' then it wouldn't be a tiny little man ring and it wouldn't be 'echoing' it either. It would be a flag. It's cheap and nasty rubbish - plated sterling silver not solid. How is wearing an ugly, cheap ring positively patriotic?



What happened to old fashioned quality that's made to last?
Why is it only men can rely on this symbol?

The only thing the ring identifies the wearer as is an idiot. If he was really such a great bloke he wouldn't be wasting his hard earned money on a piece of crap like this. Awful. I was going to say this entry writes itself but I got a bit ranty there ...

Kiwi fruit vine wallpaper and iGoogle theme

Following my previous post featuring photographs of the kiwi fruit vine in our backyard here is an early Christmas present for you, readers.

For those of you with an iGoogle account - it works with your blogger account, I use it for Google Reader - you can now have these photos as your iGoogle theme. Over the course of the day it will change photographs. Simply click 'change theme' then put 'kiwi fruit vine' into the search box, hit search, then click the theme to use it.

If you have a longer format screen as I do then here's a link for a wallpaper of my favourite image from the series (yes it's my current wallpaper). You need to do is download it to your computer then set it as your wallpaper.


click image

[cue Bowiesque riffs] Ziggy had some mail...

... but he'd already moved from here,
and the spiders in the yard.
So we forwarded on his mail,
and this wasn't the only item.


A previous tenant at my new house. What an awesome name!


I prefer the Bauhaus cover version. It's edgier.

Kiwi Fruit Vine

These photographs are of the female kiwi fruit vine in our backyard. Her male counterpart isn't ready to fertilise her flowers yet. Hopefully he will have some mature flowers on him soon thus enabling our mature lady to have kids/fruit. Otherwise she is flowering in vain, unless there's another male in the neighbourhood.



It's a bit like the quintessential modern woman who is ready to have kids but her partner isn't mature enough yet for that to happen ... In the vine's defence he took a knocking during the drought and almost died, so he is growing as well as can be expected under the circumstances. She's all luscious and leafy and he's all thin and barely grown decent foliage. Perhaps she is encroaching on his area of the garden bed? [shrug]

We will help him along with food and water.

Then we will eat their kids!

[semi-evil chuckle]

[EDIT] I have made an iGoogle theme using these images and a desktop wall paper. Links to follow soon.

Pizza. Just eat it!

It has never occurred to me to do anything else with it! How about you?

Kneadable eraser gone wild! Ooer...

This is not typical of what happens when the three of us at our house have a drink together. One housemate has a kneadable eraser she uses when doing sudoku puzzles. At the time we were drinking she had a cold. I marked our glasses with blobs so we wouldn't get it. My other wanted something else and it all went downhill from there! My eraser owning housemate made the ample pair for my glass but I made the man and woman nether bits.

Polly wants baked beans on toast!

'Best description of owning a parrot: "... it's like having a toddler running around with a canopener on its face..."'
a friend of a friend on Facebook.

Concept Radical

Finally won something for my art as an adult*: third prize in the Concept Radical art competition. In my characteristic and ironically artless way on receiving my prize
"Oh wow, I never win anything!"
Professor Carl Schiesser, Director of ARC while shaking my hand
"Well, you've won something now"
"Thank you! [big grin]"


Flow
digital image of collected beach flotsam

Concept Radical Art Exhibition
Free, and open to the general public
Wednesday 2 November 2011 – Wednesday 9 November 2011.
The gallery is open 11am – 5pm Monday to Friday.
George Paton Gallery, Second Floor, Union Building, University of Melbourne, Victoria.

Official site here.
Summary and details here.

*Have won things as a child. It has been a while...

Stop by the bakery.

Near a bakery and some (Victoria Market's deli section has a few baked good purveyers) Melbourne CBD. I was waiting to cross the street to catch my tram, and noticed what I first thought was simply a little cake sticker brightening up the sign, then on closer inspection:

Someone has gone to the trouble of creating a whole sticker with wording to match and blend into the sign. Nifty! I love spotting quirky little things like this when I'm out and about. It's one of the things I love about Melbourne, which is well regarded internationally for street art. I am wondering how long it's been there without me noticing and also many more are out there.

Brain juice needed

At work in the city my colleague's first customer of the day:
"I'm after a juicer."
"What sort/type?"
[pause] "Zzzt! Zzzt!"
"Electrical?"
"Yes."

Smurfing power point

Being short sighted and not having poked around in the cupboard near this I didn't notice a quirky little feature in our new house's bathroom - one of my housemates did. It's a tiny little faux powerpoint. Totally cracked me up when she showed me. The painters seems to have masked it off and painted around it just like a real one! I've included my Smurf keyring and keys to give you an idea of scale.

You don't wanna touch this

Mike Rowe on TV show Dirty Jobs is instructed to clean up the living area for the birds in a Las Vegas magician's show. On being told to get the kinks out of the long, pink water hose
"This is a very kinky hose ... The kind you don't take home to Mama."

Take a closer look

The first time I noticed this eucalyptus was a few months ago, while jogging by. I thought it was just a bit of branch some kid had shoved into a crack in the weathered mooring post. It seemed to stay fresh for a rather long time. Over a week later I took a closer look and realised it was a tiny tree. It's been there about 6 months now.

Taxman/highway man same diff: both like to bowl!

Generously proportioned, red wine glass/trophy with shiney silver rim and graphic was bought from Savers in Brunswick. Depicts Australian highway man/hero (WTF? I've never understood that, he was no Robin Hood) Ned Kelly.

Random thought on God.

Not sure if one person wrote both of these or not since it would be odd to write it in two different media yet the script is similar. I happen to like hommus though I haven't always.

Lost silhouette

An oulined shadow of a person next to a sign in Footscray. It has since been removed.

Buntissue

A used tissue of mine that when the light hit it from a certain angle looked like a bunny.

'Flow' in Concept Radical

click image to view

I have an entry in the Concept Radical art competition. Art submitted to Concept Radical explores free radicals and their impact. You can help me win a prize just by viewing my art which if you click on it will take you to a larger than life view of it. If you create a log in identity you can also rate it and comment on it there on the site.

Cookie Monster and Tom Waits mashed up.

This is very clever. He/she must have watched a LOT of footage to get the perfect clips. I love the way they've used Cookie's characteristic finger in the air and face palm to convey the importance of his words, and feeling of helplessness in the context of the song. Cookie Monster never seemed more profound. I hadn't fully appreciated his ability to emote until now.

Kudos to Henson and Oz for creating a character that connects so well with people of all ages. He is my favourite SS character.

Make a Beer Baited Slug Trap, Mark I

Slugs like beer to death and so do snails apparently but only slugs seem to come to my refurbished, Ye Happy Slug Inn (MI). It's very simple. You set up an 'inn' amongst whatever plants they are munching. Slugs go in, guzzle beer, get legless and drown - dying a happier death than they do by pellets I'm sure.



1. Save and wash clean a small cuttable plastic container, in this case a 1L milk bottle which has a nice wide neck.
2. Using a box cutter/stanley knife, cut container into two halves to make a shorter container. Use scissors to tidy up the edges if you wish. Make sure the lower half is tall enough to contain about 1/2 cup liquid. If using a lidded tub, cut a hole about 4cm in diameter/square in the lid to let the slugs in. A lid of some sort helps to keep rain from diluting the mixture and other larger animals from getting at the beer. If using a bottle choose one with a wide neck to waft the beer scent and invite slugs in. A soft drink bottle is too narrow, but some water and energy drink bottles have suitable wide necks.
3. Put about 2 to 3cm of beer in base of container and put on lid. I previously tried Carlton Draught which works but not as well as a Corona and Pure Blonde blend do.
4. Place amongst whatever slugs are eating. If in a garden bed you may wish to partially bury the base to 2-3cm above ground level, for stability and to ensure only slugs climb up into it and no other invertebrates fall in.
5. Check every few days to fish out dead slugs, or more frequently if it has been raining. The beer is fine to keep reusing. You will find that with warmer weather a layer of yeast will form. Although icky, yeast is what attract the slugs so you should leave it. I use an old sieve to strain out the slug carcasses and bury them in shallow graves in garden beds and pots. You could also use an old spoon to fish them out of the beer.


The sign is made of an offcut from the bottle, a toothpick and decorated with a mostly permanent pen (HDPE plastic is hard to write on).

Hosiery at the beach?

I guess it will keep the sand from getting between your toes if you're weird and don't enjoy that.


Lustre hosiery, image from the 1929 annual of The Draper of Australasia.
I found the disembodied pair of legs and solitary hand disconcerting and oddly accessorised. That appears to be a child's beach pail and spade next to her.

Rebekah Bogard

Doing random google searches without anything in particular in mind usually leads me to something cool. This time it was 'ceramic artist'* which led to Rebekah Bogard's curvaceous, sensual and colourful works. I particularly liked the detail and texture of her Scientific Series which seems to have been inspired by nudibranchs. Those are awesome critters to start with. The execution is spot on.


Intrigue
2001
9" x 7" x 6"
earthernware, underglaze, glaze
image credit: Rebekah Bogard

Later works are cute and colourful animals with a toy aesthetic about them. This is teamed with a subtle sensuality, pain or other human experience which can be a fraction unsettling at first, yet pleasing because the cuteness is a hook that reels you in.


Happiness
2006
27" x 21" x 16"
earthenware, underglaze
image credit: Rebekah Bogard

*Technically a ceramic is a cast item, while pottery is clay that is hand formed.

Lusty fabric

Lustre crepe fabric, image from the 1929 annual of The Draper of Australasia.
That's a sexy piece of drapery lying there and those ladies know it. Uh huh.

Men's Socks Illustrated

Lustre half hose for men, image from the 1929 annual of The Draper of Australasia.

I've never never seen such a pair detailed, skillfully rendered and styled half hose aka socks before and I probably won't ever again. Neither will you I'm quite sure so here's a detail for your delectation.

Top Dog something something...

Top Dog bathers for men and women, image from the 1929 annual of The Draper of Australasia.
I'm not sure what is going on in this image but it's odd. The first thing that caught my eye was the inflatable crocodile. I didn't know they made them back then! Next, the woman's right leg is tucked away or resting at a weird angle or is possibly being eaten by the crocodile. The man's left arm and hand is invisible, then my brother noticed that his fingers are in weird positions for holding a ball. If you're on the look out for odd things with a vague sexual connotation well there's that in this picture as well...

Random thoughts on dogs*

A dog is like a person only better.

Puppeh is another word for dog.

I've always wondered why dogs with their superior sense of scent always smell each other's bottoms directly instead of just sniffing nearby or elsewhere, and also how can some dogs find faeces an attractive meal? I know that dogs have scent glands under their tails. After watching a documentary from the BBC about the sense of smell I came up with a hypothesis.

Things that are harmful to humans to ingest such as off food, faecal matter, vomit, rotting flesh give off organosulfur compounds or sulfides in their scent. Our sense of smell is particularly sensitive to sulfides. Dogs can happily eat any of this stuff without much harm and sometimes to benefit because thier guts are designed to deal with it.

My hypothesis is that dogs are virtually insensitive to sulfides. They don't need to detect them, only the other parts of what make up the scent. By ignoring one note of the scent they can appreciate the finer nuaunces of a scent that make it unique.

Have you marvelled at the texture and form of your dog's nose? You can immortalise that in a silver pendant to treasure always. Clicky here.

*May be added to in future

One Piece Bathers with Cut Outs - For Men!

Over the last couple of Summers, women's one piece bathers have featured saucy cut out sections for the slim, brave/fool hardy among us. You need to have the body of a model to pull that look off as you can see here.


Image from the 1929 annual of The Draper of Australasia
Smokin' hot or what? The Melford suit was also available in black trimmed with two red lines around the bottom hem which looked even smarter. No really!


You can feel the heat radiating from the glowing face of this Adonis.

In all seriousness though he is a buff chap/trio with fine pins!

Enjoying the silence?

[to the tune of Sound of Silence, by Simon and Garfunkel]
Hello insomnia my old 'friend'.
You've come to taunt me yet again?
I will fight you off with myyyy red wine,
And surf the web just oooone more time.
As my vision, it grows blurryyyy with fatigue,
Longing for sleep,
And the rooooad outside ... grows silent.

Wonderful cook!

I sat on the tram to work earlier this week with 3 older ladies, who I think I've sat with before or possibly served in my shop. Anyhow they were chatting about how many cookbooks and cooking magazines they had and didn't use, how they'd been sorting through them. One lady said after talking about the assorted magazines she had accumulated around the house said
"I've got _so_ many! When I die they will think 'She must have been a _wonderful_ cook!', when all I've got is a wonderful collection [chuckles]".

Funky little lion logo

This is the first of a short series of images scanned from the 1929 annual of The Draper of Australasia. Sure I could have scanned a great many images of the fashion of the time, but let's face it I think we're all quite familiar with that sort of thing. This blog is more about the quirky rather than the quaint. I don't find 1920s fashion particularly exciting anyway.


Trademark, John King and Sons and Glasgow, drapers specialising in curtains
He looks like he's holding up his thistle with a grin, a spring in his step, a slightly flamboyant curl to his mane, and tiny round sunglasses perched on his nose.