One More Reason Not To

Let’s just go through the catalogue of ways to die in Australia:

  • dingoes which eat babies
  • brown snakes
  • funnel-web spiders
  • sharks
  • saltwater crocodiles
  • Sydney traffic
  • unchecked, uncontrollable bush fires
  • box jellyfish
  • blue-ringed octopus
  • its cousin, the blue-lined octopus
  • stonefish
  • Australian paralysis tick
  • and so many more

Now we can add mouse plagues to this list:

At night, the floors of sheds vanish beneath carpets of scampering mice. Ceilings come alive with the sounds of scratching. One family blamed mice chewing electrical wires for their house burning down.
Vast tracts of land in Australia’s New South Wales state are being threatened by a mouse plague that the state government describes as “absolutely unprecedented.” Just how many millions of rodents have infested the agricultural plains across the state is guesswork.
The plague is a cruel blow to farmers in Australia´s most populous state who have been battered by fires, floods and pandemic disruptions in recent years, only to face the new scourge of the introduced house mouse.

And of course, plagues of mice sometimes result in follow-up plagues of… you guessed it, snakes, which treat this as some kind of Roman orgy of gluttony, and not only gorge themselves but create still more snakes to take advantage of the bounty.

Predictably, this mouse plague is being met with customary Aussie ingenuity and just as predictably, activities like this are being greeted with horror by the Usual Suspects (almost all of whom, of course, live in areas untouched by the mouse plague):

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) on Tuesday pleaded with farmers not to kill ‘curious animals’ that are ‘just looking for food to survive’.
‘They shouldn’t be robbed of that right because of the dangerous notion of human supremacy,’ PETA spokeswoman Aleesha Naxakis said.

“Human supremacy”, eh?  We should also drop this bunch of rodents into drowning pits and fire barrels.

As a lad, I used to enjoy hunting for mice in the fields nearby our house, armed with my trusty Diana air rifle, but I think my best day only yielded a dozen or so.  This Oz thing is something else altogether.

Still Incommunicado

Sorry, folks… this is what you get when your apartment complex gives the sole contract to AT&T… resounding silence to my request for assistance.  (And don’t say “satellite”, because guess who owns DirecTV?)

Anyway, I have a few moments to write some stuff, and I’ll do so in a moment.  Regular programming should resume In’shallah when AT&T deigns to give it back to me.

Still Not In

…as the actress said to the bishop.

Well, our furniture and most of our stuff is back in the apartment.  Have we been able to do anything with it?

Nooooooooo because the place is still not habitable (minor construction yet to be done, drywalling, electricity etc., no fridge and most importantly, no working toilets or indeed water from the faucets).  So as I write this, we’re still stuck in the Fleabagge Inn, now living out of suitcases and moving boxes (because we packed them, expecting to have moved by now).  Oh, and our “temporary housing” allowance from the insurance company has ended, so it’s all been out of pocket since just before the beginning of the month.

All this, plus the theft of the guns and the resulting cancellation of the Boomershoot trip has given me an attack of the gloomies.

The only good thing that’s happened to us is that thanks to the generosity of her family, New Wife is heading back to Seffrica early next month to visit with  friends and family, and most especially, to meet the brand-new granddaughter.  I, however, will be staying behind (because a. I can’t afford to go and b. I really don’t feel a desire to go back there).  But we will be apart, the first time since we got married, and for two weeks withal.

Please bear with me as I pull the covers over my head and growl miserably.

Kim’s Hell

This is what happens when I get curious about stuff and set out to explore.

Last week, I read that former Spain- and Real Madrid goalkeeper Iker Casillas (one of the best goalies ever, btw) has divorced his journototty wife Sara:

…and moved to a “Japanese-style” penthouse in La Finca.

Where dat?

Not being familiar with Spain, I eventually found out that it’s a swanky suburb of Madrid.  (I should also mention that I caught the giggles because I first read “Finca” as “Fica” — the Italian slang for “pussy” — but I recovered and went on.)

I should have stopped upon learning that La Finca was a Madrid suburb.  But noooo, I had to see what it looks like.  Casilla’s penthouse apartment (see here) should have given me a clue, but when I DuckDucked it, I saw stuff like this… endless examples of foul glass and concrete boxes modernity:

       

I could go on, but I think you get the drift.  (If you want to see bigger pictures — gawd help you — just DuckDuck “La Finca Madrid”.)

As a rule, I quite like traditional Spanish architecture — especially the Catalonian style:

 

…and as for apartments and public buildings:

 

Compared to those, La Finca Horrible doesn’t even come close:

I think I need to look at something beautiful, just to recover from that hideousness.  Here’s Paz Vega:

Now that’s some classic Spanish architecture for you.

Raving Beauty

Whereas Sabine Schmitz was taken from us at age 51, Jessica Walter — one of my favorite character actresses of all time — held out till 80.

Here we go:

In later years, she just aged like the finest wine:

And now [sigh]  I’ll just have to take Malory Archer off Ye Olde Buckette Lyst:

R.I.P. Jessica.  You were always one of the best, and one of my favorites.