Mysteries/vexations « Come friendly bombs

Spring & other vexations

Magda suitably festooned to meet local requirements

It is the custom here as March makes its lion-like entrance to exchange small trinkets of red-and-white thread with friends and loved ones. The little bracelet, pin, zipper-pull, etc, known as the Мартеница (Martenitsa), symbolizes health and happiness for the coming year, and as the first of March [...]

Reconstruction

Okay, so I spoke too soon regarding the Wordpress upgrade, as is visually apparent to any regular visitor. ‘Failed’ should read ‘managed’, ‘a’ should be ‘every’, and change ‘more’ to ‘never’.

Enjoy isoglossia’s personality-free default theme while it lasts.

To be fair, the custom theme that has turned out to be responsible for all the breakage [...]

For Anna, with love and squalor

My niece on The Book Of The Face tagged me approximately 100,000 years ago in a meme-driven trivial tell-all viral annoyance campaign, and since I don’t know enough about Facebook to operate its inner workings with any reliability, I am responding here. The request was for 16 random facts etc. about me. If you know [...]

Upgrade: good news bad news endless loop

Quick FYI for those who still haven’t gotten around to deleting the isoglossia feed from their RSS delivery system: we have grudgingly upgraded to the latest version of Wordpress following a warning from our hosting service that failure to do so within a week (last week) would result in the site being shut down, [...]

Gravity always wins

Total damage: one UV filter

File under Things I Am A Fan Of: seatbelts, helmets, and lens filters.

I’ve owned three Pentax SLR cameras in my life, and now, as of Easter Sunday, each of them has endured catastrophic accidental droppage. The cameras have always come through fine, which is a testament to the solid build-quality of [...]

The smell of inevitability

By the hour the acid-yellow buds of the forsythia emerge and expand, even as the scrawny shrubs’ spindly branches are whipped and battered by horizontal rain and keening winds tearing down from the Alps. This wind, locally called the burja, has been clawing at the eaves for nearly a week now. While it’s undeniable [...]

Which ought to come standard with home pregnancy tests in the first place

Adam has learned to sing. He writes his own material. Latest hit: “Finger Monkey Moo”. The lyrics run something like this:

FINGER MONKEY MOO! FINGER MONKEY MOO! FINGER MONKEY MOO! FINGER MONKEY MOO! FINGER MONKEY MOO! FINGER MONKEY MOO! FINGER MONKEY MOO! FINGER MONKEY MOO! FINGER MONKEY MOO! FINGER MONKEY MOO! FINGER MONKEY MOO! FINGER MONKEY [...]

Halfway through €40 worth

This autumn would be better with less antibiotics and more almost anything else besides antibiotics. Tacos, for example.

We're calling it laryngitis

Sorry, can’t talk now.

Why, oh why?

So here’s the story.
We’re out in the town of NG one sunny Saturday afternoon. Nothing special, just the usual time-killing activity to survive with the two. Ice-cream, coffee, beer, playground, making fun of other citizens of our respectable town.
Suddenly we come across this:

Let the photo speak for itself.
No, just let me ask, why, oh why [...]

	kilowatthour on Spring & other vexations 7th Apr 10 hey! i saw one of these hanging off a tree down the block the other day. i kind of love ...
	jagosaurus on Spring & other vexations 6th Apr 10 Fascinating. I saw these pictures pop up and wondered what bizarre hazing ritual you were being subjected to by your ...
	admin on Spring & other vexations 6th Apr 10 It is a really interesting and charming tradition, and I am nowhere near as cynical about it as this post ...
	Erik R. on Spring & other vexations 6th Apr 10 What an interesting tradition. Thanks for sharing. They're biodegradable, I hope. Or do some trees still have their paraphernalia from Martenitsi ...
	Spring & other vexations « Come friendly bombs on So it's war 6th Apr 10 [...] where they seem really quite happy no matter how much poison Magda lobs at them. It’s Ant War [...]

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