GOOD TIMING

The traffic stats on this ’ere (slightly neglected) blog ought to tell you that I’m not a great threat – not yet, anyway – to eBay, Amazon or Wikpedia, so there’s no real need for me to conceive of posts that pad out the stats for ‘hits’ or ‘unique users’ or whatever currency people who need to know that kind of thing (me, once upon a time, although I didn’t, so blagged it) trade in these days.

Anyway, I, as a writer – in the Borgesian sense: someone who “measured other men’s virtues by what they had accomplished; yet he asked that other men measure him by what he planned someday to do” – prefer a wee bit of text during my browsing. (Apart from those sites, maybe. And those.) However, I’m not entirely averse to fairly gratuitous (if not stat-boosting) selections of images, and have a few mates who reckon I’d be better off sticking to that sort of thing wholesale. 

So here’s a collection of well-timed photos that might release some low-level dopamine explosions in your noggin. 

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"CURRANT BUN" = HARMLESS FUN?

Never let it be said that The Sun doesn't wish to keep the public stoopid*:

...Just like the time they weighed in to Chris Morris over the Brasseye paedophilia special, 'Paedogeddon', directly opposite a picture of the 15-year-old Charlotte Church:

Oi, oi – wall-errrp.


* NB: It has been pointed out to me after publication that the image may be a fake. Check the byline. I'm not  going to remove the post, though, because the inauthenticity of the clipping doesn't vitiate the central point: The Sun is an organ of stupefaction. 

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PLANNING PERMISSION

This sequence of fifteen images is staggering on both a logistical and conceptual level.

The engineers or project managers will wonder: exactly how many trips carrying bits of soil and clay in its beak did this nestmaker make? How far from the nest is the source of the building materials? How long did it all take?

As for the idea, the architect might think that, while it is unusual to see a bird conceive of building its home there, on a window ledge, the truth is we lack the information to know why that might have been. Surely it could have found a tree somewhere? Whatever. While it’s genuinely impressive for the creature to have constructed this circular structure there, the churl might argue that the wee beastie has merely spun the basic bowl-shaped nest ‘blueprint’ through ninety degrees. OK, fair enough. But what about the whole carapace it then adds on – pretty much a cave – in order to protect the eggs from the elements. Was this an afterthought – improvised, as it were?

Anyway, all in all it is mightily impressive (assuming that those double-glazed windows behind aren’t part of a house that’s occupied. Even if it is, the workmanship doesn’t look quite as spectacular). What with their birdsong as well, they’re impressive little blighters…

Pretty incredible, eh?

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