Then...KOREA

I can't think of a more eloquent introduction to this post other than, "I love comics." Isn't that fantastic writing? Why hasn't the New Yorker called yet?

I love comics. Love to read them, love to draw them, love to study them as an art form (or literary form? Begin the debate!) and, heck, even love it when other people talk about them. All right, so it's a lousy introduction. But at least it's not as lousy as the following transition. This transition. I mean the...drat! I screwed up the transition!

And speaking of transitions, Mike over at super-swell comics blog "Mike Sterling's Progressive Ruin" uncovered possibly the worst transition in the history of comics:

Battle Stories #5

Then...KOREA!

Good heavens. Sort of wakes you up, doesn't it?

So Mike started a meme of using that last panel for other awful transitions Yes. I love it. I couldn't help making a few of my own. (You'll have to click to enlarge them, bleh.)

A Man Called Kev #3

Apologies to Bill Watterson

Apologies to kittens

Perspective!For Comic Book Artists by David Chelsea

Boy oh boy, I think I could make a million of these. That's what my entire blog is going to be from now on. Just one "Then...KOREA" after another! Thanks for the meme, Mike!

What I want to say is...

Talented musician/humorist Carla Ulbrich pretty much writes my post for me today. It's the song that goes through my head, like...all the time. Not exactly true today, but it'll do.

(If that link doesn't work you can try the video, but the audio version is much better.)

Last Day of Awards Week - Nudies for Everyone!

Happy Saint Patrick's Day! And now for a post that has nothing at all to do with Saint Patrick's Day!

I wish I had the time to create an individualized award for everyone I know, but alas, real life nips at my heels. So for my very last award, I present the Nudie! (a.k.a The Nudibranch Award)

What, you were expecting a picture?

All right, but how to choose?

Nudibranchs, you see, come in all sorts of shapes and colors. If you can imagine a crazy design, there's probably a nudibranch out there to match it. If your sugar-crazed kid scribbles out a random crayon disaster, they've most likely drawn an actual species of nudibranch.

Nudibranchs are a bit like sea slugs, though not true sea slugs. Their name nudi branch means "naked gill," referring to their exposed gills - snails without shells, one might say. They are...well, how can I describe them? They are just the coolest darn things. When I taught outdoor classes in marine ecology, one of my coworkers was absolutely nuts for the little guys. Her excitement was contagious, and pretty soon we were all nudibranch hunting. Whenever we had a few in our bucket, we'd all gather around and watch them for five, ten, twenty minutes.
Some of them drift through the water peacefully, like the Hooded Nudibranch, which smells like watermelon when you lift it out of the water. Some of them can crawl upside-down on the water's surface, clinging to the surface tension. Some eat stinging anemones and incorporate the stingers into their bodies as their own defense.And nudies are tough, man.
They can regenerate lost body parts, though sometimes it takes a while. When we kept them in our educational aquarium, they had a baffling tendency to get drawn to the outlet pipe, where they would end up getting sucked into the front of the grate until someone came along and rescued them. With their flimsy-looking little bodies, you'd think such a battering would leave them in a pretty bad way, but they always bounced back.

Some are actually rather aggressive. Opalescent Nudibranchs will fight each other in a head-to-head death match, winner eats the loser. But they're not tough enough to survive in polluted waters, and they have the bad fortune to prefer coastal habitat, where pollution is often the worst.

Nudibranchs are found all across the world, 3000 species and counting. New ones are being discovered all the time. You can have your space exploration, but I don't think you'll find anything wilder than what's right here.

Oh hey! There's a green one just for St. Patty's Day! And here I thought I didn't have a tie-in.

Because nudibranchs come in so many wonderful varieties, I found it only appropriate to use them for my final award. The Nudie goes to...

*drumroll*

...you!

Yes, you! If you are one of the many varied, wonderful people who have faithfully read and/or commented here, then this award is for you! It's my way of showing my appreciation, a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow!



The rainbow is there to make up for the fact that the featured Alabaster Nudibranch is more or less devoid of color. The Alabaster is a common nudie in my neck of the ocean, one of my favorites.

But if rainbows aren't you're thing, here's an alternative. The Hooded Nudibranch!



Well...um...

*facepalm*

All right, so the Hooded Nudibranch looks like a teddy bear that went through the garbage disposal. In real life they are graceful masters of the water, honestly! (And they smell like watermelons. And they don't really look much like this.)

Here's another try. What about the Shaggy Mouse Nudibranch?



Fuzzy.

While it may be impossible to design a neat-looking award starring a nudibranch, that doesn't negate the fact that you, my readers, are the neatest bunch around. D'aaaw! Hooray for everyone!

Next week, blog posts that don't involve hours of drawing...hopefully.

All cool nudibranch photos courtesy the National Geographic site.

Awards Week: Day 5 - The Angry Tree Octopus Award

Today's award is inspired by one of my favorite little critters, the elusive Pacific Northwest tree octopus.

Found in the dense rainforest canopies of Washington's Olympic Peninsula, the tree octopus has been driven to near extinction due to bow hunters, alkaline rain, suction blight, and over-harvesting by increasing numbers of Sasquatch, their natural predators.

(Thanks to the Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus site for this rare picture.)

I've been advocating for tree octopuses (note the proper plural) ever since I set up this blog. In fact, that was THE reason I started blogging. Many of my faithful readers will remember my petition to stop the cruel trade of tentacle-related goods, like shaped rubber bands, which led KiddyTime Bandz® to introduce an Octo-Safe™ label on their entire product line (excluding red shapes.) Simultaneously I continued to post tips on mollusk photography (best time of day for lighting: 3:47 pm) and warn about the dangers of travelling in Sally Sucker-Cup Country. Indeed, many a hiker has been driven to drinking by the maddening howls of these arboreal cephalopods.

This is why we have so many microbreweries in the Northwest. Check out the bios of their founders, and see how many first started drafting after returning from the woods.

So now I'm pleased to offer on tap, for a limited time only, the illustrious Angry Tree Octopus Award.



The ATOA goes to a blogger who makes regular, frequent appearances. This angers the octopus, who doesn't like it when someone shows up more than he does. (Which is never, because he doesn't actually exist.) He would rather see a blog disappear entirely...but that's what the White Dolphin Award is for. So the octopus must go to a place he hates the most, a highly visible blog, and thus he exists in a state of perpetual indignation.

I award this award to Snarke over at Snarke, who wins it hands down. Not only does she blog like a fiend, but she also posts a vlog with equal frequency, once updating every day for an entire year. That's commitment. Really, she deserves to win this award twice. She writes about many things, but most of all the wondrous network of super-nerds that makes the Northwest such a great place to live. She is a font of knowledge for every quirky fun event that goes on in the Portland metro area. And now I know who John and Hank Green are thanks to her.

To accept this award the recipient must appease the ego of the tree octopus by blogging at least five tree octopus facts. These can be, for example, which type of tree it prefers, or its migration patterns, or what restaurant you two ate at together recently, or boxers vs. briefs. And then, if the recipient so desires, he/she can make the ATOA angry again by making it appear on someone else's blog.

Tomorrow, the last of the awards! Will it be...for you??

Awards Week: Day 4 - The Bull Kelp Award

Well, this post has certainly been a fine kettle of fish.

By now I hope you've all noticed that my awards are sticking to a nautical theme. And why wouldn't they? They're each coming from fifteen feet below, rising up out of the depths. Just like pulling up a crab pot, you never know exactly what you'll get.

At its conception this next award rose up like the mighty Kraken itself and nearly strangled me to death. At first I thought I was concocting something nice and simple. Then Blogger and its "I hate all your images, I CRUSH YOU!" interface stepped in to shrink my award to the size of a hairpin, so I had to spend an hour chopping it into pieces to make it display correctly. It's times like these when I wish I had an insanely large readership as motivation.

(Me to Self: I'm doing it for the children!)

But I didn't give in. I labored through the long night to defeat (maybe) Blogger's impossible interface just so I could go all Scott McCloud* on you today. Therefore I'm happy to announce the inauguration of the esteemed, inestimable Bull Kelp Award!

Ready?

Here we go!


Whew!

Giant bull kelp is one of the fastest growing seaweeds, and when they grow they mean business. They get up to 120 feet long. That round bulb, which is filled with carbon monoxide, floats the kelp to a vertical position. Imagine thousands of these all growing together and you have one of the most amazing places on earth, a kelp forest - the Redwoods, only underwater. These forests are breeding grounds for all kinds of fish. Even fine kettles of fish.

Fun fact here, if you want to see a good example of the domino effect. People hunted out sea otters from the West Coast for their fur back in the 19th century. Sea otters love to eat sea urchins. Sea urchins love to eat bull kelp, but they, being short little critters, can only reach the kelp at its base. When they chew through it, it's the equivalent of felling a tree, except instead of falling down the bull kelp just floats up and drifts away. So...no sea otters to eat the urchins means swarms of urchins crawling across the sea floor chomping through the bases of bull kelp - massive deforestation of the kelp forests. Without the forests the fish don't multiply, fisheries start to fail, and we all end up eating tilapia.

So the next time you eat tilapia, look down at it and say, "Damn you, Victorian fashion trends!"

Speaking of eating, the urchins aren't wrong about the kelp. I love eating it too. It's crunchy and delightful. Most seaweeds are delicious, as long as they grow in clean water. (When I taught classes in this stuff, I once ate some rockweed off the coast of Seattle. Ugh. Bit of a mistake, was that.)

What does this have to do with awards, you say? Well, despite the amazing towering structure of giant bull kelp, it lacks the same kind of specialized cells found in vascular plants. A cell taken from any part of the kelp looks more or less the same as a cell from anywhere else.

Isn't science fun?

The bull kelp, one might say, keeps a consistent theme no matter how large it grows. Consequently, the honor of the Bull Kelp Award goes to a blog that maintains its theme throughout the passage of time. I've got two for you:

The first is the Misadventures of the Monster Librarian. The Monster Librarian is an actual real working librarian (for real!!) who writes on all manner of book- and library-related things, including reviews, library lesson plans, literary awards, and so forth. She sprinkles in bits of poems and reflections about her real life to keep things interesting, in case you're not as die-hard a bibliophile as you ought to be.

The second is my friend over at CatholicLand! (which, despite its name, has no "Seven Deadly Sins"-themed rollercoaster, sadly.) Although most of his posts make me want to jump up and start a theological debate, I've really enjoyed learning about the Catholic perspective through his site. It's important, I think, to see where someone else is coming from, especially as our country gets slogged down in partisanship. If you don't have enough information to argue for someone else's view, then you probably don't have enough to argue for your own.

And that's how my post somehow went from kelp to politics in three paragraphs or less.

To accept the Bull Kelp Award, the recipient must somehow figure out how to write about bull kelp while still staying true to their respective blog's theme. The gauntlet has been thrown.

Tomorrow, another award unveiled!

*If you don't know who Scott McCloud is, see footnote.**

**Oh, wait, I guess that was the footnote. Well, you person-who-clearly-doesn't-draw-comics, Scott McCloud is an artist who challenges other artists to break the normal boundaries of the panel and the page. Go find some of his online stuff and be amazed.

Awards Week: Day 3 - The White Dolphin Award

Remember how I said the most amazing thing about my blog was that I'd recently discovered how to make image mouse-over titles?

I take it back. My best new discovery has been Blogger's scheduling tool. Here on the Northwest Coast we get snow oh so very rarely, maybe once every five years, but this year was the year. An unseasonable cold March storm rolled in and dumped five inches of wet snow yesterday, knocking out the internet for most of the day, but thanks to the scheduler my post got put up anyway.

If the world suffered a life-ending cataclysmic apocalypse, how many authorless blogs would continue posting for months afterwards thanks to the scheduler?

And on that happy note I hereby announce the noble and much sought-after White Dolphin Award.



The Yangtze white dolphin, or baiji, was one of only three species of freshwater dolphins on earth. Freshwater dolphins are incredible creatures, quite different from their saltwater cousins. One of these days I'm going to write an entire post about the boto, pink dolphins of the Amazon, that laugh like children. Some think they are the spirits of drowned men.

But wait, I'm getting distracted.

The tale of the white dolphin, unfortunately, isn't a nice one. Found only in the Yangtze, they were once called the "goddesses of the river." But they couldn't survive the pressures of the growing Chinese population. Direct hunting, habitat loss, entanglement with fishing gear, and the increasing pollution of the river took its toll, and after years of decline the dolphins at last disappeared. They were declared extinct in 2006, the first loss of a marine mammal in over fifty years. They're also a first for me - the first animal that I remember learning about as a kid, watching my animal documentaries and thinking, "I want to see those!", that now I'll never get to see.

Here's an actual photo:



Extinction. Think about it.

So to honor the vanished white dolphin, I hereby confer this award on all of my friends and acquaintances who have left their blogs untouched for a year or longer. (I thought about listing them, but they are numerous. You know who you are.) Like the white dolphin, they are apparently gone forever, yet I cling to the slim small hope that all the experts are wrong, that someday they may come back again, that I might catch a glimpse of their glistening fins insightful musings once more!

To accept the award, the recipient must pass it on to another blog. To pass on the award, the giver is not allowed to notify the recipient in any proactive way. They must discover it for themselves. If they know they have been remiss in blog posting, then the award is theirs.

Hooray! Isn't making up awards fun? I should do it more often.

Tomorrow, something!

Awards Week: Day 2 - The Horseshoe Blog Award

Today I give out the prestigious and time-honored (beginning today) Horseshoe Blog Award.



The horseshoe crab is an amazing and cuddly (though kind of jabby) creature. Since we don't have them on the West Coast, they're like unicorns to me. Yes, when I've seen them covering the beaches of Maine it's akin to witnessing vast herds of unicorns thundering across the savannah. Like unicorns, they are pointy. Their blood has magical properties. And...that's pretty much the extent of how they're like unicorns.

Horseshoe crabs have been around in their current form for the past 250 million years, and so it stands to reason that the Horseshoe Blog Award goes to a blog that has been a mainstay of regular quality posting for many years running. Therefore I award this snazzy crab to Wendy over at Opera Buffo, whose blog has been alive and well since 2004. (!!!)

Wendy's an editor and author - her first full novel is due out this year (it's going to be awesome) - who blogs about cooking, mommy-ing, gardens, eco-friendly living, and (naturally) writing. Everything she writes has something deep about it, even if she's expounding on rainbow sprinkles. (Which, come to think of it, I don't think she ever has. Post idea?)

To accept the Horseshoe Blog Award, the recipient must continue to blog faithfully for the remainder of the year, although the exact definitions of the words "faithfully" and "year" can be disputed in a court of law.

Tomorrow, another astounding nonexistent award!

In Which I Shower Awards on Everyone in a Reality of My Own Making

Wow, last week was quite a collection of nothingness, wasn't it?

While I was in the midst of regretting that not every post here is something grand and glorious, I was forced to remind myself that this blog was originally created for me, after all. If I had the good fortune to write something others found appealing, then I might enjoy the camaraderie as an added perk. My original intent was to give myself an outlet so I wouldn't clog up my group blogs with long, uninvited monologues. I discovered that blogging provided good motivation to keep the rust off my writing. Happily I've chronicled events that I would have otherwise forgotten, since my memory doesn't cover much more than the last few weeks.

One might wonder why I didn't just start a journal instead.

(But...ah, where's the fun in that? Where are the creepy unpublishable spam comments in that?)

About the most amazing thing about my blog is the fact that I've recently discovered how to make mouse-over text on my images, which finally proves that anyone, after fourteen years of using HTML, can learn to write "title =". I am the Queen of the Internet.

And so since my blog has been nothing more than a glorified journal, and since it's not been, on the whole, anything particularly insightful or delightful, I was pleasantly surprised when I was nevertheless given this,



by Violet over at Creative Devolution, whose blog is pretty much an example of everything an awesome blog should be - bright 16-bit colors, humor, do-rags, insanity domestic life, and interior decorating. I started reading her blog, she started reading mine, rainbows formed in the sky, et cetera. I frequently read her posts multiple times, they're that good. Go on and check her out.

Are you back? All right then! Well, what excited me far more than the actual Liebster was the logo that Violet drew for my blog:



Eeeee! I'm so happy!! Also, finally someone realizes that my entire blog is underwater! Yow yow! Hooray for thematic continuity!

Right. So the Liebster Blog is a blogging award giving by bloggers to bloggers for blogs that are especially bloggy, and by that I mean that "liebster" translates to "dearest" or "favorite" from German (and not "lobster," sadly, as Brett over at The Transformed Non-Conformist, rightfully pointed out), ergo one receives such an award for being a likable blog. Other restrictions apply. Not intended for blogs with ridiculously large followings (over 200 followers), must be passed on to five fellow bloggers, this product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.

Huzzah!

But look. I've been out of the blogging loop for a couple of years now, many of the blogs I used to know and love have given up the ghost (at least temporarily), and I lettered in the game of Calvinball, so why do something the same way twice?

(Also, I like to break chain letters. No, I don't think I'll have bad luck if I don't forward this to at least twenty people.)

Therefore I've instead decided to instigate a new batch of awards, since we're playing in a world where I can control the laws of physics. That's right, this is the show where everything's made up and the points don't matter. Awards for everyone! I'll be giving them out every day this week.

For my first award, since I was so heartbroken to find it was "Liebster" and not "Lobster," I bestow this, the coveted Giant Growing Lobster Award, on mining the nooks.



The GGL Award is given to the blog with the greatest potential to grow into something amazing and unstoppable. To accept this award, the recipient must draw an original rendition of a giant attacking lobster. Easy, no?

I had the opportunity to meet Galen, the illustrator over at mining the nooks, in person. Even though I'm not much of a horror aficionado, I love her style. Her paintbrush seems to be permanently set to "blood splatter." She also posts links to other amazing artists. Pretty inspirational all around.

Tomorrow, another made up award!

This post is not about squirrels

This has been one of those weeks when I have a million things I'd like to write about, plus some things I need to mention (prizes, yes, I'm getting there), but this is also a week when deadlines are raining down from the sky.

That's probably why my brain is dredging up so many post ideas. It's doing everything it can to avoid thinking about actual important stuff. "Hey! What about squirrels? Yeah...? Squirrels? Let's write about SQUIRRELS!" it says.

(Don't worry, I'm not going to write about squirrels. I do have a little veto power, after all.)

So here, while I go off and work on deadlines, you can stare at this...thing...I found in a newspaper in England. It's fantastic. I don't have any clue what it means. I feel I have to spread this joy. (Click to enlarge.)


You're welcome.

Where His Legs Is At

Bonus Sunday post!

Keeblerkidd located my Toilet Tube Man's missing legs! So exciting!


Toilet Tube Man's legs went down the swirly bowl in Scotland and ended up on a stock photo of a street sign in Australia. This makes sense.

Now the two can be joyously reunited.


And he lived happily ever after until the next time it rained.

a tidepool of thoughts

Lately I have been finding a healthy colony of non sequiturs hiding beneath the ol' mental rocks. Like:

When is the best time to post a gigantic post? Or a deep post? I never considered this much until my friend over at Snarke mentioned that mid-week is the best time for weighty posting. I would have guessed Friday, giving people lots of time over the weekend to read a long post. Obviously I have much to learn about the delicate finesse of blogging.

(I've also read that one should not blog excessively about the act of blogging. Whoops! Tripped into that hole.)

Recent discovery. You should not grab the shower head and sing into it like a microphone unless your goal is drowning. You can do it, however, if the shower is turned off. But what are you doing singing into a dry faucet in the shower fully dressed in the middle of the day? Get help.

On the topic of showers, I wonder how many other people step out the shower, wrap their towel around their shoulders, and pretend to be either 1) a vampire or 2) a Roman senator. Or both at the same time.

Why are they called "attorneys at law?" Is there such a thing as an "attorney at something else?" Aren't they all at law?

I've never learned how to burp Tupperware. Do people still do this? Does modern Tupperware even have the ability to burp?

When I hit the "Next Blog" button, I find that I'm surrounded by blogs about Mormons and cancer survivors. (Also sometimes Mormon cancer survivors.) What does this mean? How did I end up in this neighborhood?

So many question...

aaaaAAAAH!

*clasping ears, staggering around*

I'm not always the brightest taco in the piñata.

While trying to find an online hearing test for my dog, who has been ignoring low rumbly things like fire trucks lately, I found a thing on The Oatmeal site that said, "See if you can hear like a teenager!"

Well, who can resist that?

Flashback. My grandpa used to have an alarm to keep the mice out of his shop, one of those little devices that emits a high frequency squeal. It was the most painful sound in the universe. I understood why it would make mice run. Every time I had to go get something from the shop, I would dive in and out again as fast as I could.

From this I established the fact that my ears are quite healthy in the upper register, thanks.

The lower register drives me nuts. Any time I hear a low frequency rumble, I get nauseous, easily confused, angry...it's my Kryptonite. It has now reached the point where I wear ear plugs whenever I'm walk alongside streets with too much traffic. The rumble of combustion engines makes me want to fling myself into a wall. Hooray for the future day of blissfully silent electric cars!

I'm curious about things like this (synesthesia and such), so I started reading about all the various auditory/neurological issues that are floating around out in the great wide world, waiting to settle on some innocent's unsuspecting head. Phonophobia (the fear of certain sounds), misophonia (intolerance of certain sounds - hello, low frequencies), hyperacusis (oversensitivity to certain sounds...)

Wait, I think I have that last one too. This just confirms my theory that if you have any little quirky tic or pet peeve, someone somewhere has come up with a medical term for it. Are we nothing more than a jumbled collection of diagnoses?

I fell for the irresistible temptation of seeing if I "had hearing like a teenager." What I got was a redux of my grandpa's mouse whistle blasting out through my computer speakers. Could not fumble for the keyboard fast enough.

I may be bleeding at the ears now, but at least I've won a prize, yay:



(Created by The Oatmeal)

Lost Draft: 20 Things to Do

While browsing through my unpublished drafts, I came across this 2007 list of things to do before I die:

1. Learn Morse code
2. Join a protest
3. Apprentice to a master sushi chef
4. Write a musical play
5. Take a homeless person out to lunch
6. Travel as a crewmember on a sailing ship
7. Walk across the Brooklyn Bridge
8. Build a treehouse

Five years later and much more the responsible adult, here are some things I would add:

9. Make a quilt
10. Publish a novel
11. Memorize the constellations
12. Start drawing a long-form webcomic (maybe even finish it)
13. Learn how to spin a car 180
14. Get my black belt
15. Fund a scholarship
16. Go to Antarctica
17. Bake a good loaf of sourdough
18. Dive with a whale
19. Play the fiddle
20. Shoot a clay pigeon

The list is always changing. I crossed out the original #5 and #6, since those two are (dun du-du duuuh!) ACCOMPLISHED!

In their place I'll put:

5. Try jellied eel
6. Get a PhD

And I've had plenty of chances to try to shoot a clay pigeon...I just haven't hit one yet.

But last year I did begin another one of my long-time goals - I started sponsoring a child. She's six, she lives in Mozambique, and the few letters and drawings we've exchanged so far have been wonderful. I'm excited to be in her life as she grows up. I hope I can help inspire her to stay in school as long as possible. I worry for her and the gender constraints she might face as a young woman in Africa. Maybe someday I'll get to meet her. What an amazing day that would be!

(Edit: Yikes. The above sounds...sanctimonious. Complete fail in tone. Really I just wanted to say !!!!! but that's kind of hard to put into words. Seriously, people, I'm super excited about my sponsor kid. That's what I get for writing while I'm distracted.)

Back to the list, though, it's really not all-inclusive. There are so many things to do, learn, make. Life, why are you so short?

Fair disclosure: I haven't included any goals that are imminently about to be fulfilled...

Three Funniest Things Heard While Handling Docklines

All of these were said while I was on the ship, working a dockline in the middle of a docking maneuver.

Number one-
Man on land: "Nice yacht you have there!"
Me: "It's, um, a schooner, actually...but yeah, thanks."
Man: "Are you the owner?"
Me: (handling a relatively unimportant line on the bow of a 130ft tall ship while coming in to dock, clearly not at helm) ". . . No."

Number two-
(while going through the Ballard Locks)
Man on land: "So... Is this some kind of fishing boat? Are you kids all in school?"
Crew: ". . ."

Number three-
(overheard, while captain is fighting the helm against the wind, just nearing the dock, now thirty feet away, now twenty feet, now ten...)
Woman passenger to captain: "Got much wildlife around here?"
Captain: "?!? Not now!"


Hey look! A bunch of sailors dangling over the water!

Translation Party!

I was just introduced to Translation Party, a fantastic website that translates an English phrase back and forth between Japanese and English until the translation no longer changes. Now my sides are hurting with laughter. This was the best translation transition so far:

Original:
We like to bake and eat chocolate chip cookies each and every night.

Thus the long conversion to equilibrium:
We like to bake and eat chocolate chip cookies each and every night.
我々を焼くために、チョコレートチップクッキーを食べるように、それぞれ、毎晩。

We have to bake the chocolate chip cookies to eat, each, every night.
私達が食べるためにチョコレートチップクッキーは、それぞれ、毎晩、オーブンで焼く必要があります。

We have to eat chocolate chip cookies, respectively, every night, you should burn in the oven.
私たちは、チョコレートチップクッキーは、それぞれ、毎晩食べている場合は、オーブンで焼く必要があります。

(*side note* - Apparently Japanese is a violent and vindictive place. I do not wish to go there.)

We have chocolate chip cookies, respectively, if you eat every night, you need to burn in the oven.
場合には、毎晩食べて私たちは、あなたのオーブンで焼く必要がありますチョコレートチップクッキーは、それぞれがあります。

In this case, we are every night, if I was chocolate chip cookies, eat the bread in the oven, each is required.
この場合において、私たちは、毎晩、もし私がチョコレートされたチップクッキーを、それぞれ必要とされるのオーブンでパンを食べる。

In this case, we have every night, the chocolate chip cookies, I would eat bread in the oven for each is required.
この場合において、私たちは、チョコレートチップクッキー、私は、それぞれが必要ですが、オーブンでパンを食べると、毎晩している。

In this case, we are chocolate chip cookies, I require each, and eat bread in the oven, that every night.
このケースでは、チョコレートチップクッキー、私はそれぞれ必要とし、オーブンでパンを食べている、毎晩。

In this case, chocolate chip cookies, my oven every, every night, you need to eat the bread.
このケースでは、チョコレートチップクッキー、私のオーブンごとに、毎晩、あなたのパンを食べる必要があります。

===================================

Wa! No wonder there are so many bad Japanese translations!

Me Pointing at Things

I pointed at a lot of things on our Alaska trip, apparently. I feel that a pointing finger placed strategically within a picture adds so much interest to the composition, don't you?

Here are some of the things I pointed at:


Me pointing at British Columbia. They're a bit full of themselves, aren't they?


Me pointing at the Exit Glacier. Whoops, these aren't in any kind of order at all. The Exit Glacier is nowhere near British Columbia.

Me pointing at spinach. For supper. Yummy.

Me pointing at the infamous "Yukon Sour-toe." You can drink it fast, you can drink it slow, but your lips have gotta touch the toe. And yes, it is a real severed human toe, thank you very much.

Me pointing at a gorge we took a hand tram across. It was a very long ways down, and the door on the basket wouldn't shut, so whoever wasn't pulling the rope had to lean against the otherwise open door. Fun.

Me pointing at a black bear, one of our first official wildlife sightings. This was in fact in British Columbia.

Me pointing at delicious moose dinner, the steaks we got from the gal at the visitor's center. Served up with a little spruce tip jelly. Mmmm. The best meal of the whole trip, I thought.

Me pointing at the Burwash Landing (Yukon Territory) giant gold pan, biggest gold pan in the world. Is that man bleeding? I couldn't tell.

Me pointing at a fairy slipper. They're rare to see because they are over-collected by flower fanciers. A fairy slipper plant has to be 13 years old before it will flower.

Me pointing at a lake at Snag Junction, the Yukon. We camped the night there and swam in the lake the next morning. It was cold...we survived.

Me pointing at salmonberries. Ketchikan had more ripe salmonberries than I've ever seen in my life. They're one of the first summer berries to ripen, so we were lucky to time it just right. I had to use my hat when my hands got too full.

Me pointing at a can of refried beans, de-canned and festooned with spoon. Using cans of refried beans turned out to be a lot harder than we thought, so we were left with quite a few at the end of the trip.

I am slowly working through my thousands of Alaska pictures, attempting to organize them. That takes care of the "Me pointing at things" category!
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