Urban Wildlife

I realize that we live in basically an urban environment here in Long Beach, and I've posted before about our "Lonely Harvest" and the wasps that live in a tiny nest in the rafters of our balcony.

But, in addition to the wasps, I've been noticing our critter neighbors who struggle making a life in the immediate vicinity around our place.

There is a squirrel that teases Tuxedo and some of the other neighborhood cats. It'll stay up high in the trees and squawk down at them, taunting and screeching. It's amusing, but hard to photograph.

Another thing that's hard to photograph is the bee-hive that's on top of our apartment, but here's an attempt:

You can almost see them buzzing around the opening of the drainpipe. I think that's pretty close to their hive's opening.

There's also a murder of crows that have laid claim to this section of downtown Long Beach. They roll through on what I suppose are their rounds every few days and make a racket while silencing all the other birds. Sometimes in the mornings one will perch right on the top of the post centered in the picture below. That post is pretty close to our bedroom window, and the crow that perches there will make all sorts of noise.

That's when I stick my head through the blinds and squawk back at it, getting its attention. Eventually I scare it away, but it hesitates like the proper upper echelon predatory bird that it is around here.

Earlier today something had the crows worked up. That something? A hawk chilling on the sidewalk, paying them no mind. It took off before a picture could be had, but the crows didn't seem to take too kindly to that incursion.

Hawks, crows, bees, wasps, squirrels and cats...it's a regular nature show around here if you know where to look.

Exhaust Trail Shadows?

Seriously, check it out, the view from out balcony the other day, which was also the day of the Super Bowl:

The jet's exhaust or vapor trail is casting a shadow on the high cumulus clouds, making it look like a ceiling. Um...how exactly...is it me? Does this look cheesy fake to anybody else? How is that line of sight created? That vapor must be in front of some kind of screen made of clouds or the shadow cast at this angle appears flat against cloud surface that's irregularly distant.

It was closer to dusk than noon, and this is facing west, perpendicular to our beach, which faces south.

That picture can be disorienting. Here's the angle that it looked when you first see it with your own eyes:

Here's a super close up, just a tiny bit grainy, but the shadow looks good:

Weird sometimes.

Like, okay, look at the above picture. What do we see? Four wires, hazy clouds over a blueish sky, jet exhaust and shadow, and palm fronds.

Palm trees sneak up all the time in photos down here.

Long Bike Ride

In an attempt to fill up my days with hours sold to other folks doing stuff, I found myself chasing down some leads. Those turned out to be at Cal State U. at Dominguez Hills. CSUDH has one of the best teacher credentialing programs in the nation, and I've been doing some things with them, but on this particular day, I had a meeting up at campus.

CSU Dominguez Hills, in Carson, could be the only college campus with a professional team's field onsite. The LA Galaxy and Chivas USA soccer teams both play at the Home Depot Center, which is on campus.

In any case, with campus in Carson being close by, mostly, to Long Beach, I decided to ride the subway and take my bike and ride from the stop. Then, when I saw which stop I needed to get off at, I looked up the sheer miles: our apartment to DH campus.

Only ten miles.

That's when I decided to just go for it, and ride the whole way there. My knee needs the work, right?

If you start at the ocean, put your back to it, and then head away from it, it makes a certain sense that you'll be heading uphill.

That's how it worked out on paper. Ten miles. Five straight up the LA River bikeway, maybe one or one and a half from our house to the bikeway entrance. Two or three more from the river bikeway to Central Ave, and three or two up Central to campus.

That last stretch up Central is literally up Central.

Later on, talking with Vic (Tux's babysitter while we went to Europe), telling him about it he stopped and kinda yelled at me. Then, when Corrie got home, he asked her how she could let me do that, and told her she has to put her foot down on my crazy ideas. We all had a good laugh at that.

On the way home I took the train. Del Amo Blvd isn't really bike friendly (go figure), and I rode the sidewalk (when it was there) back to the train station and rode it home. I iced my knee afterwards, and the next day when I got back on the bike, my knee felt fine and maybe even a little stronger.

Carson and Long Beach and Southgate and Norwalk and Lynwood and Compton are all little "cities" that seem to snuggle altogether in South Central Los Angeles County, and they all look pretty much the same, and they're divided by invisible lines on maps. What Vic remembers the area being like (one that's certainly unsafe for a shaggy whitey like myself) and what it is today aren't congruent anymore..

This is NO Turkey

I lifted this from Cracked's site, but I think it's pretty creative. Gruesome, sure, but creative:

Not much to say about this, besides, "Cool, huh?"

Black and White Madness!

Action shots from all across the internet---and history!

When I heard that there was a spot called "Auto Polo" I thought, Now that's an awesome way to spend an afternoon. After I broke my leg, though, my days of dreaming of a revival of this game got shelved:

Places and times that had cool games like car polo also had other cool shit going on, like big cylinders with motorcycles and autos driving horizontal along the walls.

How can we make a motorcycle driving along the inside of a cylinder even more exciting?

Staff a sidecar with a lion. Ethel Purtle and the King, baby! Now here's a spectator activity I'd thoroughly enjoy.

The last two old-timey black and white pictures are from WWII. The first is a shot of the D-Day invasion after the beachhead was taken and the people and equipment started getting offloaded. It looks like a video game still, like it's too fake to be real, but it isn't, it's all reality:

Another thing about WWII pictures is that you'll find things that are so spectacular that if you were to use it during an action movie, the audience would believe that the explosion or whatever would be solely the work of the special effects team, because war can't be like that. Until you see the pictures from the aerial dogfights.

Spectacular...

Meaty Diagrams

Here are some diagrams for beef and pork. The first are from the UK, and the seconds (for both) are from the States.

Now, after working for some time in the restaurant industry, I can say I never committed these to memory. I almost would have thought the first diagrams are the US one, but I'd be wrong.

I think they're pretty cool.

Again, the UK beef diagram:

And the US beef diagram:

Here's the UK pork diagram:

And here's the US pork breakdown:

Everywhere I worked in New York had pork belly back when it was starting to trend in 2007. It was reasons like that that would trip me up in a blind quiz of these two sets of diagrams.

Random Picture: 2 and 3...

This picture is a slide from, obviously, Cracked.com.

I like the fact that Kat Dennings has a starring role in the show, or in any show really; there's not enough real looking girls on television. This show, however, has other problems. I've tried to watch it a few times, and can't ever sit through scenes long enough to fully grasp the character dynamics.

But this slide easily captures one of the things that bothers me.