Exit, Pursued by a Bear

Mr. Wiggle

The boy is discovering toys, which he's receptive to in the right mood. We've inherited some excellent baby toys – thanks, all.

He seems to want to reach out for them, but doesn’t have the muscle control for it. In the meantime, in the right mood, he can spend ten or fifteen minutes in his swing suffused with total open-mouthed joy, adoring Mr. Wiggle, his multicoloured plush worm. He is friends with Mr. Bat and friends with Mr. Bee (Mr. Bee has wings with a darker colour on the underside, which interests him), but there are none like unto Mr. Wiggle. Mr. Wiggle used to be the Wiggleworm, then Mr. Wiggleworm, which was cumbersome, so he's now Mr. Wiggle. You can pretty much see the brain development:

- a multicoloured object, with different colours in different spots,
- which moves, although I'm also moving in relation to it,
- which I can turn my head away from, and it will be still be there when I turn it back
- and so forth.

Grad school in no time for this lad, I'm telling you.

Why I like the Archbishop of Canterbury

from a BBC interview:

Simon: There's a vicar, called the Revd Robin Harvey, who carried out a survey of shops and he found that out of 2140 packets of cards, only 23 packs, 1 per cent, were of a religious nature. His church is fighting what he described as, in a statement, 'the manufacturers of political correctness, taking Jesus out of Christmas'. He's got a point, hasn't he?
Rowan: I don't know that it is political correctness, though. I think, ever since there's been Christmas cards, there have been non-religious Christmas cards. When I was a boy, I can remember asking myself: 'what on earth have stagecoaches got to do with Christmas?' - because half the cards we had seem to have stagecoaches on them, or robins for that matter, really. There they all are. It's really just a question of the fact that all through the history of Christmas cards, people have shied a bit away from religious scenes, quite often.
Simon: I'm just trying to think if there is anything of spiritual significance in a stagecoach...
Rowan: Well it's on a journey from somewhere to somewhere, so I suppose you could make something out of that, if you're really desperate.
Simon: Yes, I suppose you could.

---

Simon: You're probably the most famous Christian behind the Pope and Ned Flanders.
Rowan: There's a problematic trinity for you!
Simon: I suppose the two most prominent Christians in there would be the Revd Lovejoy and Ned Flanders. Would you enjoy going to the Revd Lovejoy's church, do you think?
Rowan: No, I don't think I would, frankly. I think he's a terrible preacher. He's got a boring voice. And, well, I'm afraid he's a sad, pompous chap, all told. Ned Flanders, at least, is ludicrous and foolish, but generous. He actually does forgive people, and I think, he's a sort of - as a Christian - you might say he's a 'fool for Christ's sake.'

---

Simon: We appreciate your time with us very much, Archbishop. Are you enjoying the job?
Rowan: It depends which day of the week you ask me, really.
Simon: How about Tuesday, the 6th December 2005?
Rowan: Just at the moment? Fine, thanks.
Simon: Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, thank you very much indeed for spending some time with us today.
Rowan: Thank you.

Man walks down the street –

- wearin' a hat like that, you know he's not afraid of anything. Yours for $199.95 US.

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progress report

The boy is feeding incessantly day and night, which makes him contented but everybody else exhausted. He's starting to look more like a baby and less like a strangely ancient space creature, a genetic cross between Winston Churchill and ET.

The new house red

From the LCBO site:

NUVIANA CABERNET SAUVIGNON MERLOT
LCBO 623181 | 750 mL bottle

Price: $ 8.90
Wine, Still Table Wine, Red Still Table Wine
13.0% Alcohol/Vol.

Sugar Content : 1

Made in: Penedes, Spain
By: CODORNIU S.A.

Tasting Note
Cherry-ruby colour; vanilla, black plum aroma; flavours of earth, smoke, dark fruit, carmel and vegetal flavours.

I’m with them on the black plum, earth and smoke; I also thought leather, whatever that means in the cold light of day. A very adult wine for the price, if that makes any sense. At a guess-the-price tasting, I would have thought $14 or up. I had misgivings about the bottle: there was mould around the cork (no smell, though) and the cork broke, but the wine turned out fine.

Didn’t need much in the way of airing.

Here are the maker’s notes, for those whose Spanish is better than mine.

Update:

Google is your friend: The new house red comes from a spectacular part of north-central Spain, where the inhabitants enjoy peculiar folk customs.

Tony Aspler tasted leather too, so I know I’m not completely nuts.

on the other hand -

The slick way of organizing a service like this would be to allow users to set up a playlist online with a username/password, then turn on the radio and listen to it – CBC local news followed by Newshour on the BBC World Service – something like that.

Of course, I can already do that for myself, for free, using RealPlayer.

I can see the attraction for private-sector listeners, but not for people who already listen to CBC Radio, with all due respect to CBC Radio 3.

coming to a satellite near you

This can’t come soon enough, though I have to say I can’t totally visualize how it would work in practice. If I understand it correctly, the subscription goes with the device, not the subscriber (unlike a paid-access Internet service like salon.com), so that I’d have to get two subscriptions to access it with two radios, as well as replacing the radios – can this be right? Car, home stereo and Walkman would be three subscriptions, which seems a bit steep.

The slick way of organizing a service like this would be to allow users to set up a playlist online with a username/password, then turn on the radio and listen to it – CBC local news followed by Newshour on the BBC World Service – something like that.