Your Sunday Squirrel

This guy looks similar to one a few weeks back, but he's different.  The pose is the same, but the few-weeks-back fellow is in a patch of sunlight and this guy isn't.  Squirrels have been rare of late.  I didn't have much of a chance to visit Denny Park this week because I was in Snohomish at my parents' place.  Their squirrels are completely unfriendly, but they have hawks and owls to contend with, so who can blame them?  But they're still around.  I thought that since I didn't see them raiding the bird feeder, they were all gone.  No indeed; they're just very shy.  They do like to scramble around on the lawn, but they don't venture to the bird feeders anymore.

Prade 2014

Well, today it was OK to be proud and gay.  Wow, that really super-rhymes!  In years past, I've taken a whole slew of photos and then left after a fashion.  There was always a lot more parade.  This year, there was about four hours worth.  I think every gay person in Seattle must have marched in that span of time.  I left after nearly two hours.  Since I've taken so many pictures in the past, I wanted to feature just a few to sum up the event.  Well, here's your few photos:

It's grand marshal George Takei!  He's gay, you know.

And here he is with more of his police escort.  I've always found him a pleasant guy.

Oh, and Macklemore was there, too.  Here is a bad photo of him:

So yes, there were many, many marchers.  Of course, this year also had its share of naked people.  As usual, the majority were those you'd never want to see naked.  But there were a few who looked quite fetching.  Sorry, no pictures.  Just take my word for it.  This is quite different from the past when the unsightliness was near-total.

Anyhow, it was a fine, if not extremely long, parade.  Be proud, folks.  And be careful in dumb countries like Uganda.  Those guys don't know anything.

Your Sunday Squirrel

This was not an altogether good week to view squirrels.  I blame it on the fact that the days are so long.  Squirrels get up at first light and are generally back in their trees by the time I stroll by and shortly after 8:00.  This particular squirrel is from a few weeks ago.  He's shouting at another squirrel.  Note the cupped paws.  He was trying to let him know that I had run out of food and that I was a very alarming predator.  How clever of him.

My View

Two weeks ago, somebody thought it would be a great idea to do this across the street.  I dunno, I think it says "Hobbesy."  Yeah, that's kind of like Banksy, except Banksy uses images as a critique of society and this guy doesn't know where the mouth goes.  In the last few days, I've seen other tags by this guy.  It harkens back to the days of Zeb, the douchebag who tagged everything.  A word of advice: no one cares about you spray-painting your name on anything.  Nobody.  I think we've gone beyond pissing on things to claim them as territory.  It's just a juvenile statement that is unimportant to everyone.  Zeb the douchebag was eventually caught - twice.  The community rejoiced.  He really wasn't any good.  Plus, he was a douchebag.  When they busted him in Portland, this is how he looked:

Yeah, so much for subverting the dominant paradigm.  Who knows, maybe this guy Hobbesy or Hobbes or whatever is a true rebel - just like the ones they show on commercials for cell phones and luxury cars.  Me, I long for the days of Eye Guy or Scary Skull Guy.  All we've got is taggers these days.  It's like having all drum machines and no real drums.  

One of My Neighbors Did Not Like Race for the Cure

First off, thanks for the heads-up about this from a reader.  Wow, somebody actually reads this crappy blog.  Hallelujah!  Anyhow, it seems that somebody really hated all the noise they were making during the Race for the Cure.  In her defense, they did start screaming "Woo!" at 8:00 on a Sunday morning.  And this incident did happen at around 9:30, so she put up with it for quite a while.  Me, I had already been up for a long time, but I can sympathize.  But her mistake was tossing a bag of garbage on the crowd.  The article notes that it was predominantly kitty litter, some frozen chicken and at least one bottle.  She hit a few people and missed even more by just this much.  And for that she's got popped for felony assault.  Ouch!  OK, so the charges got knocked down to reckless endangerment, but that's a pretty serious initial collar.  Now, I've been roused at all hours by various noises caused by very stupid people.  In fact, last Saturday at midnight some dumbass parked his self-propelled stereo in front of my building, opened all the doors and cranked the volume.  Why?  Who the hell knows?  I tried shouting from the window for them to turn down the damn volume but it was just too loud.  Fortunately, once I got my shoes on to go down there and instruct them in the error of their ways, they left.  That didn't make me happy, but I wouldn't toss garbage on them.

I'm not one of these people who says, "Well, if you want your rest, move to the burbs."  Most Sundays and most of the week, Belltown is peaceful and very sedate.  After all, this is Seattle.  It's a sleepy town.  It's too bad this rather comical incident happened.  But when you feel powerless, weird stuff happens.  

Your Sunday Squirrel

There are certain times when my focus-bot's incompetence actually results in a good picture.  This is one of those rare instances.  This fellow is just whirling around like squirrels do and I caught him at the right moment.  His tail makes a pretty sweet vortex.  But this isn't nearly enough.  Here's a guy with an itch:

Because squirrels nest, they attract fleas, so they itch a lot.  Also, under the right conditions, they can carry bubonic plague.  I heard that they tested some squirrels in Oakland a few years ago and one of them had the plague.  Wow, tough luck, Mr. Squirrel!  

Oh, and speaking of rodents, we had Father's Day festivities over at my sister's place today and I got to catch up with their guinea pig, Rigby.  I pig-sat him last November and he was a very pleasant charge.  He was totally nuts about parsley, I tell you what.  Anyhow, he's doing quite well and was even a bit frisky, which isn't super-common in guinea pigs.

Your Sunday Squirrel

Yes, there were many squirrels yesterday at Denny Park.  Here's a fellow I ran across first.  He was really into his Kit Kat bar wrapper.

But in order to enhance the experience, he really had to get his face in there.

When another squirrel came along, he walked off just like this.  He couldn't figure out why he was bumping into everything, what with the wrapper over his face and all.  Like I've said for a long time: squirrels aren't that bright.  He eventually got himself and the wrapper into a tree and gleaned the last bit of sweet, sweet sweetness from it and was still hungry enough for a peanut or two.  There were other squirrels, but this guy was the most amusing.  

Wow, People Sure Hate Cancer!

Last week, it was all the woo people in my neighborhood; this week, it's much more calm at Lake Union.  But the cause is the same: people hate cancer.  And who can blame them?  

They had their own band...

Registration was orderly...

There were group warm-ups, lest someone pull their hamstring while ambling for a breakthrough.

But it was all very localized.  Once I got into Denny Park, it was quite vacant, except, of course, for the usual array of dozing bums.  I figured that the squirrels wouldn't dig all the bustle down the hill and stay in their trees.  I was pretty wrong.  

Your Sunday Squirrel

I ran into this fellow yesterday.  It was a very nice day.  I wanted to finally get a picture of a squirrel in the sunshine, but aside from stopping here for about half a second, he headed straight for the shade.  It makes sense.  Somewhere wired into their squirrel brains is the survival knowledge that if they're in the full daylight, predators like eagles, hawks and the occasional owl can see them.  I always wondered why they made almost directly for the shade and I guess I've figured it out.  Squirrels are pretty un-fond of open ground, because something is bound to dive down on them, scoop them up and carry them away.     

Kangaroo City!

Well, not just kangaroos.  There are wallabies, lemurs, alpacas, donkeys and a buttload of peacocks, too.  This place is right outside of Arlington and it's pretty cool.  You get to feed the animals.  Here are some:

Here's a lemur with a lemurette.  They're pretty entertaining when they get to bouncing around.

This is a kangaroo.  They like to lounge.  There's not a whole lot of hopping that goes on.  You feed them pieces of bread and they doze.  Somebody once told me that it's because many species of kangaroo and wallaby are nocturnal.  I guess that would explain things.

Here's a wallaby and her joey.  They had a few moms and joeys around. 

They give you pellets and if you put one between your lips, this alpaca will take it from you.  He was quite gentle.  Also, on the way to this, a goat attacked Stacey's skirt for no reason.  I guess it made sense in goat logic.  I managed to get him to let go by giving him real food. 

Here is another, completely different kangaroo who is lounging.

This is Karl the Ostrich.  Just like the emus and miniature pony they have, you're not supposed to get close to them, because they'll totally mess you up.  Finally at the end, they let you hold a joey.  This one was very sweet:

Race for the Whoo!

Today was Race for the Cure.  Like most people, I'm opposed to cancer, so yeah, it's a fine cause.  Most of these running events, however, don't have cheerleaders camped out on my block.  OK, so they weren't exactly cheerleaders because they had no set cheers.  They would simply scream, "Whoo!" whenever people were running by, which was always.  Occasionally, they would offer encouragement like "You can do it!" or "Keep running" and such, but mostly it was, "Whoo!"  This went on for two hours.  I left after that, not because I couldn't stand it but because I was going up to see kangaroos.  Yeah, lots of "whoo!"