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Spotted at the parking lot of the Joggins Fossil Cliffs, on the Bay of Fundy - the rocks may be old, but the thinking isn’t. There were several of these spaces near the entrance to the interpretive centre (right up front, by the wheelchair parking.)

No vehicles parked in them, though.

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Seen outside the Union Church in West Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia. You know, in case the meaning of “church” isn’t clear.

I suppose they eventually they meet in the cemetery, too. Or in heaven. Dual purpose sign.

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I just can’t get excited about this place.

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Nothing funny about this, just quaint and rather true. Though I would have paid good money to adjust the frickin’ rain clouds.

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OK, this is really cool. My friend works at the Jost Winery, in Malagash, N.S. Not only do they have a good website, but they have the largest URL you’ve ever seen. They hired a surveyor to map out JOSTWINE.COM on an unused field behind the winery, and they plough it a couple of times a year. The letters must be a couple of hundred feet high each; above is a photo I took from the bottom middle tip of the “M” in “.COM”. Despite the rural location, there are now quite a few jets flying overhead on their way to the posh Fox Harb’r Gold Resort & Spa. And of course, it can be seen from space via Google Maps. Behold below:

View Larger Map

In Ontario, municipalities use different names for the August civic holiday, honouring historical figures Colonel By, Joseph Brant, Samuel McLaughlin, Alexander Mackenzie, John Galt and James Cockburn. Until his death in 2002 the residents of Cobourg, Ont. mistakenly believed the day to be named after James Coburn, and screened The Magnificent Seven on the side of City Hall every year. The practice has been discontinued.

Here in Toronto, it’s Simcoe Day, named after John Graves Simcoe, who founded the city, and for good measure abolished slavery and introduced trial by jury, freehold land tenure, and “European-style” lapdancing.

His wife Elizabeth Simcoe, however, the second-best name in Canadian history*:

Elizabeth Posthuma Gwillim

To raid Wikipedia some more:

- Yes, the townships of North, West and East Gwillimbury that you pass through on Highway 400 on your way to cottage country are named after Ms. Gwillim. Gwillimburies may sound very tasty, but they give you the trots.

- The deliciously dark middle name Posthuma was chosen because her mother was buried the day baby Elizabeth was baptized. It is the same reason my middle name is Sprained Ankle.

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* #1 in my book is Amor de Cosmos, the second premier of British Columbia and third album by The Police.

So when our kids finally outgrew our trusty Graco double stroller - too beaten to sell, but still roadworthy - we figured someone would find a home for it. Both our sets of grandparents bought used strollers to keep in their garages, and new ones are expensive, so why not?

Well, after a day on the sidewalk, it was no love for Graco. I figured it would be gone by morning, but instead … somebody boosted the rims!

Of course then nobody wanted it without wheels, so it ended up in the garbage, where perhaps it was always destined.

It’s not that I mind or anything - it was free pickings, after all - but I wonder what someone wanted the back wheels for? Maybe to replace their own bald ones? Making a cool go-kart? More power to you, whoever you are. But I had to snap a picture - the poor thing just needed some cinder blocks under the axels.

Take a look at any movie poster (such as the one pictured here) and you’ll see that up to a third of the space is devoted to listing the people who made the movie (I’ve outlined this in yellow.)

With the exception of the cast and possibly the director, I’m guessing nobody cares about any of these people or their involvement in the film.

Are you going to go see Get Smart because the Director of Photography was Dean Semler, A.C.S./A.S.C.? No? Well, Jimmy Miller was one of the six Executive Producers! And damn, if it doesn’t have music by Trevor Rabin! Now you’ll see it, right?

This is an advertising convention that has been around almost as long as the film business, although it seems to have gotten worse of late - check out some classic movie posters, and you’ll see most of the credit space is devoted to those in front of the camera, not behind it. A quick pixel count shows the Get Smart poster is approximately 7% product title, 4% cast, and a whopping 30% production credits. Yikes. (At CBCNews.ca we’re still lobbying to get bylines on big stories.)

And it doesn’t apply to anything but movies. Other posters don’t credit the guy who designed the tread on your Nikes, or the people wrote the code for Windows Vista (OK, maybe they should remain nameless.) Even posters for TV shows focus on the actors, not the crew, even though most of the postitions are the same as those for a big screen production.

Imagine if all marketing devoted as much space to the people behind the scenes who you couldn’t give a toss about.

Take Coke, for example (since I’m currently reading Max Barry’s Syrup).

Here’s what the Hollywood version of the can would look like.

A little space for the name of the product, a tiny space for what’s in it, and a LOT of space for the people who designed the can and mixed the syrup.

Not useful, and not appealing. But apparently Hollywood doesn’t agree. Vanity, maybe? Say it ain’t so!

Actually it’s a used car dealership, but still… I’ll bet the sticker price is reduced on this model. If you could see the sticker.

Nice billboard placement too. Family getaways are certainly NOT right next door. That’s an oozing wall of cement next door. And your family won’t be going anywhere.

If the image were square I’d print it as is. “Draft Dodgers” would be a great band name, and Seeking Sanctuary is a pretty good album title. The first track and hit single would have to be Hell No. Who do you think plays what instrument?

It’s a squirrel catcher, of course. At least, it is to my six-year-old girl, whose current fixation is anything of the family Sciuridae. She chases them across the park, wants one as a pet (wants seven, actually) and is pretty certain she’s a squirrel whisperer.

You may recall that she recently exhorted me to come to school to be on her “squirrel catching team“. Well, apparently you can’t catch squirrels without a squirrel catcher.

For weeks, she asked me if we could go into the basement to make a squirrel catcher. (It’s with three parts delight and one part guilt that I tell you she has the same blind faith in my woodworking abilities as I had in my father - the difference being that he actually *could* make anything out of wood - furniture, canoes, secret rooms - whereas I just slap together some particle board and give it a fancy name.)

I was able to put her off for a while with lame excuses - we’re out of wood, the wood store is closed, squirrels are out of season. And then one day she learned a new word, a magical word of power:

“Daddy. I have something to say. I COMMAND you to build a squirrel catcher. That means you have to do it.”

Well, how do you argue with that? So I grabbed some particle board and a jig saw, and slapped this monstrosity together - a cartoon mouse-hole screwed to an antiquish Canada Dry box.

Apparently I got it right. I told her we’d go squirrel catching on the weekend, but she’d had enough of my excuses. The next day she told (commanded, probably) her babysitter to bring it to school with her so she could catch squirrels at recess.
So, she lugged the contraption to school and made her ed assistant put it out in by the baseball diamond - and she even found some peanuts to put inside. (Peanuts are of course verboten in all parts of North America that may come into contact with anyone under the age of 20, but these rules are flouted by the crazy old guy that feeds the urban fauna in the schoolyard after hours.)

She didn’t catch any squirrels - but she did trap one of the teachers.

My daughter eventually tired of the way the squirrels loudly ignored the box, and she wandered away after them. But then the gym teacher brought her class to the diamond, and stopped short of the mysterious, abandoned box… stared at it, and concluded it must be…

A suspicious package.

She whipped out her cell phone and called the office, who called the custodian, who considered calling the bomb squad.

And then the poor ed assistant figured out what all the hubbub was, and owned up to the squirrel catcher.

The troops stood down, relaying the message that it “was just the ed assistant’s squirrel catcher.” That’s now probably on her permanent record somewhere, and I fear for the next time she tries to cross the border.

I invited her to keep the squirrel catcher, but she declined. Let me know if you want it.

Some interesting sites to check out - such as how the Textile Museum has cloth artists creating virtual pieces… Or how the Group of Seven’s secret spots have been located online. Or how plague doctor puppets and feral robots are sniffing out pollution in our neighbourhoods. We even had a live performance of a Brahms waltz by pianist Alessandro Marangoni (as Benito Flores) from Italy via Second Life.

I was particularly interested in the new breed of ad hoc public art - graffiti, installations and guerilla art enabled by inexpensive technology. In one workshop we made our own LED throwies. In another we watched videos of “projection bombing“.

This sort of thing appeals to me on a bunch of levels - I like the gadgetry, and while I love the spontaneous creativity and wit that graffiti often generates, I don’t really care for the uglifying vandalism aspect of some graffiti. (It’s the reason I’d rather post my attempts at witticism here, instead of on bathroom stalls.)

The tipping point for me was last year’s “Gustav Mahler” tagging of Toronto’s east end. Like many, I was amused at first - the message was so incongruous with the message! - but when it irreparably defaced a public art mural on the side of my local community centre, I got seriously angry. Others did too, apparently.

There are some great exceptions, of course, and I remain a fan of Posterchild’s efforts here in Toronto.

And once in a while I must tip my hat to the truly creative graffiti artist. A while back, a colleague pointed me toward Muto - “An ambiguous animation painted on public walls”, which was created in Buenos Aires and Baden.

This, you’ve got to see (if you haven’t already.)

Subject: How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? shooting at CBC Toronto

Reading on, it’s about the reality show clogging up our elevators again. But I read this subject line and thought of possible answers: By calling the cops? Hiding under your desk? Wearing a bulletproof vest? Man! Maria shooting at CBC really could be dangerous!