Mannequin Monday - Paris Edition

XUP took this picture for me while in Paris.


She tells me that, this mannequin is in the window of the Louis Vuitton store and she floats slowly up and down - ostensibly* because of the Louis Vuitton balloons tied around her hands.

It seems that the mannequin that I thought of as being clownish is actually in synchrony with Paris high fashion.

*Ever notice how XUP likes to use swellegant words? I like that about her.

All I'm gonna say about that...

... what with a comprehensive comment thread over on XUP's blog, would be to thank Aggie fulsomely for a stunningly appropriate binder clip. You rock, ma'am! As ever.

Phoque!

When I was in Newfoundland, I saw a t-shirt that had I ♣ Seals printed on the front. It took me a few seconds to get it - I wish I had bought that t-shirt.

Putting the "Anti" into Social Networking. . .

Mister Sloppy had left an urgent summons in my voicemail. Wise coyotes do not casually deny evil geniuses of his calibre. I hoofed it across Centretown.

When he buzzed me in, I followed the whooping to his secret subterranean lair, where his manic keyboarding – two computers at once – gave me pause. So did the plethora of vintage mega-sized Jolt Cola empties. He only cracks his stash when he's kickin' coding old-school. Which is never good for the state of world.

"Ummm, so, how long you been at this?" I asked.

"Since the Prime Minister got hisself posted on YouTube three days back" he said, keyclacks barely slowing. "If Jurassic politicos are pretending to use social media, it's finally jumped the megashark. They think they’ll go viral, I’ll give ‘em freakin’ viral! It's almost ready!"

"What is, Sloppy?" I asked.

Fevered blue eyes blazed.

"The Next Big Thing!" He purred, grinning, well, evilly. In capital letters. "AntiSocial Media! Facebook and Myspace are tossing net privacy under the bus, people are sick of tweeting, dorks who don't understand social media are trying to warp it back into old paradigms they do understand. So it comes to this! Is my new Antisocial Networking site not genius?"

He waved at his monitors. "Here! You can only set your relationship status to, "Alone", "It's complicated" or "None of your damned business"! It automatically rejects all friend requests! And the only reject options are, "No response"; "Ewwww"; an LMAO emoticon; or an autogenerated phrase saying, "I'd rather...." followed by a random act of self-mutilation!

His speed and pitch rose.

"You can’t control your own friends list, but all other users can remove anyone from it! When you comment on someone's status, or insult ‘em on a comment thread, it’s visible to anyone except them!

"And get this! There's no way to just follow anyone. It's only got a "stalk" option! A bot program pops up your photo on every website they browse. An automatic search for every web photo of them slams together a tribute album site that auto-links to every page that references them. The album background wallpaper can be either candles or hand-scrawled protestations of love.

"And only by paying for a premium license do users gain the power to file virtual restraining orders on their stalkers! But they only limit how many times your stalkers’s pictures pop up on websites you browse – you can never block ‘em entirely! Cool app, or what!!??"

"I love it!" I yelled, trying to match his fevered tone as I edged back up the stairs. "For masochists!"

He didn't notice. At the rate he was going, I figured he might safely pass out in a few hours. At least until I heard another Jolt fizz open. Ol' Slop was bellowing, somewhat musically, something like, "Yo ho ho, I'm gonna rule the w-o-o-oooorld!", as I let myself back out.

I hadda admit right then, that insanity other than my own can be kinda disconcerting...

An alternative one, maybe

Living the good life on Bay Street, where Richcraft has finally been shamed into tearing down its derelict properties

Pinch Me

When I was a kid growing up in La Belle Province, if you did not wear green on St. Patrick's Day, your peers were allowed to pinch you hard. It was an English custom that I did not get.

I did not wear green today, and no one pinched me. When I mentioned the pinching to co-workers, they did not get it.

If I was more brazen, I would have pinched the fellow below for being so cute in his kilt.

Walk along Bank Street with me ...

Green Shamrock on a Mannequin

Green paint

Green Leprechauns

Green cookies

Green furry shot glass hat

Green cuties

The fabulous Sally in her green shirt accompanied by her fellow and her talking dog, Boots

The PM on YouTube

Beforehand, the Toronto Star described it as the PM going viral. Maybe because it was as painful as herpes?

The morning after, Canuck media were still aTwitter (heh...) over a guy, rigidly fiberglass of hair and manner, churning out pre-scripted blahblah in response to cherry-picked citizen questions on YouTube.

So, what was the real rationale? Ummm, lessee, most of us use YouTube to upload any lame crap we feel like. Oh, wait...!

That cell phone law

I held out some hope last fall when Ontario enacted a law banning drivers from using handheld cell phones.

Huh. Didn't make a damn bit of difference. Drivers still yak - and endanger lives - openly.

The observant among you may note the statute exempts police. I'm left to ponder why, since the law came in, every cop who drives past suddenly has a handset glued to their ear. How much back-channel chatter do they need? And why? I digress.

I've filed tonsa anecdotal evidence in my doggy rounds through Ottawa's mean streets. I hafta say, it proves to me that cell phone addicts make the streets meaner. Drivers, walkers, it doesn't matter - I've been mowed down by both, and my once-fine bushy tail is a stomped shadow of its former self.

People on phones do not see their surroundings when they look inward to channel the other end of the line. I have not figured out the mechanism by which drivers think they should continue to (ab)use phones when research suggests strongly that they're so gosh darn bad at it, but the conviction seems universal. Salient signs are a thousand-yard stare and a deep obliviosity to surroundings. So much obliviosity that pedestrian offenders' glazed eyes do not even flicker as they lurch against other sidewalk citizens.

I suspect the only reason everybody thinks they can drive and talk on a cell at the same time is because the very act makes them so heedless that they never register the carnage in their wakes. Recently, f'rinstance, some nit in a high-buck Teutonic conveyance was so other-focussed that he nearly splattered me across a red-lit crosswalk. The shock on his face after he screeched to a hasty halt was compounded when I planted my muddy paws on his window sill, stuck my pointy snout in, and conversationally suggested he turn off his fucking phone so as to forestall another near-murder at the next traffic signal.

Sadly, he was not so shocked that he couldn't whine back a shaky riposte. Along the lines of, "Oh yeah? Fuck you, too!" But we both knew it was the lamest of bids to save his red-lit face...

Send in the Clowns

Every time that I notice this mannequin, I am startled for a second.

But, despite her clownish hair and her maniacal smile, she has excellent fashion sense.

Yummy Bunny

Dear Coyote,

I took this picture just for you.

Amitié, Woodsy

They were promoting Alice in Wonderland

A Taliban bobsled team?

The Independent Observer and me wuz debriefing the other night, after the Games That Must Not be Named©®™, when one of us started asking dumb, semimythical questions about a suspiciously illogical link between sporting performance and national pride.

I'm not saying our Prime Minister ascribes to this dubious philosophy. But only because it seems kind of obvious already from the quality of his recent public electioneering ummm, pronouncements on the topic. That and his disturbing recent penchant for athlete-glomming photo-ops. I digress.

Anyway, some people seemed to place an awful lot of emphasis on a warlike beating of chests and thumping of rivals' noses into the snow. Almost as if they saw the games as a must-win-at-all-costs surrogate for military endeavour. Kinda like, say, certain failed former East European SSRs now known to have indulged in the odd steroidal binge during the Cold War.

But maybe this kinda stuff ain't much of a skate from the original Olympic ideal (Oops. Damn! Named 'em...). I mean, very early games may well have been set up to give warring Greek city-states a more wholesome outlet for their rivalries than, ummm, epic bloodshed.

So it occurred to us that maybe we could institute world peace if we just invited everybody to the games. Why couldn't everybody just get along? Maybe the Taliban are just cranky because they never get invited to play! And wouldn't it be cool to see a Taliban bobsled team instead of a Taliban insurgency?

Especially the part where they plant improvised trackside bombs to blow up rival bobsleds...

Mannequin Monday

I am going to miss these ladies. Although tempted, I am going to resist going in and asking if the "everything must go" sale includes the mannequins.

They are a few of a cast of many that I like to keep an eye on for fashion ideas. There are some who live with mannequins, I just stalk them.

This picture (below) is for Seventh Heathen who like me, finds that some of the mannequins can be disturbingly hot.


The Amazon informed us that she had never noticed the enticing powers of these statuesque sirens of shop windows.



Is there a mannequin that has caught your eye? Send me a picture (I might post it) and add a few words to describe what you find alluring about her or him. Send it to woodsy.nymph@gmail.com

RNDP 29: Dating with Technological Assistance