Incendiary Interventions

On Saturday morning I started off in the car and drove to a camping store because I knew the company was having a rental-equipment sell-off. But when I got there, the annoying looking car-salesman-looking owner guy told me that this was not the right store, it was another location.

Ah well, I thought - I'll just browse about to see what I can see. After a little while of random poking around, I settled on a magnesium-steel firestarter stick. This was a small one, made in Germany. Perfect for lighting my new naptha-powered lantern and stove on my next camping trip, along with my campfire.

I then slowly made my way to the front of the store - searching about in the Alladin's Cave of a Camping Store - and placed the small package on the counter as my eyes darted about the various impulse purchase product racks assembled about on the counter. Then I pulled out my debit card. And as the owner guy swiped my card, he astonishingly - and without a smile - asked me if I was an arsonist.

Still looking about at the impulse-purchase racks, I casually replied "Do you think I'd tell you if I was?" and dryly met his eyes. He quickly went back to ringing in my purchase, without saying anything else, and moments later I left the store.

Earlier this evening I put a stuffed chicken - sprinkled with pepper and salt - into the oven. The oven was hot inside - I'd turned a plastic ring earlier to make it so.

For the next hour and a bit this made the chicken hot on the inside and the outside. That made the really small chickeny molecules dance differently than the way they had grown accustomed to during the life and the brief unheated post-mortem period of the chicken's body, and turn into different molecules and bind together and split apart - and this caused it to smell nice and look like a roasted chicken.

I gently dissected it into the right parts after it had cooled for a little, and then Spring and I ate it.

I dissected a cat in grade 13 biology. I worked as a butcher during university. I have substantial dissection training, after all.

Today I put Monty into his harness and put him and myself outside in the Music Garden - as it is called - and put ourselves down the path for a while and eventually I put ourselves at a location near some scratchy looking dried weeds.

I put a handful of this stuff into my hands, and rolled it all up and together until I had a nice tidy tinder bundle - all in breathless anticipation of testing out my new magensium-steel firestarter stick.

But then the atmosphere put a large volume of itself into the space Monty and I were occupying in a very short time span and I decided that it was too windy to try to start a small fire in the park. So I resolved to start a fire on a day when the atmosphere was not feeling so shifty.

It is worth noting - however - that I am not an arsonist.

The Tree Fish

Make Fire with Sparks and Wood Shavings

I went to work today.
At one point I played serious project manager on the phone for effect.
At one point I reflected that the Cadbury Fruit and Nut bar from England tasted good.
At one point I wrote a limerick.
At one point Matt dropped by after having a meeting describing the core architecture of the software product he is leading up for a top-secret project he wouldn't even tell me about even though I have known him for 18 years or more and been through numerous life changing movie moments with him and in fact I seem to recall him looking around nervously in the pizza joint as though the top secret project authorities were watching him or maybe I'm just making that up but then we plotted to take over the economy.

At one point my information architure diagram was minimally successful.

• At one point I ate a can of Walmart Baked Beans.
  
• At one point I taught someone behavioural interview techniques.
  
• At one point I discussed versioning control software with someone.
  
• At one point I pondered about karma.
  
• At one point I pondered about camping.
  
• At one point I pondered about my shoes.
  
• At one point I polished my shoes.
  
• At one point I drank a chocolate milk.
  
• At one point I drank a coke.
  
• At one point I drank a coffee.
  
• At one point I drank a pepsi.
  
• At one point I sneezed.
  
• At one point I stretched.
  
• At one point I yawned.
  
• At one point I couldn't think of any at all of much interest to say about my day and wondered why I couldn't think of anything at all and thought maybe it was because I used up all my brain cells today managing the crap out of a panoply, a host, nay verily I say a plethora of software and non-software projects.
  

Earlier this week I pulled my camping gear out of the storage space and began to sort everything out so that I could reduce the load, pack my new expedition backpack and ensure I had no matches at all packed for my next trip.

I intend to make a firebow and make my fire that way.

But first I wanted to see if I could at least make a fire out of a sparking piece of metal, some wood shavings and my new drop-point rose-wood handle hunting knife. I gingerly trimmed some dry wood shavings from a twig I had laying about into the a large cast iron frying pan. I turned on the oven range-hood extraction fan. Then I scraped the back of my knife against the metal bar and after a while made a few sparks. After about a minute or two I had a couple of sparks catch on the finely shaved wood chips and then I got fire! I watched it in fascination. First time I'd ever made fire like that.

So next trip I make I will have no matches or lighters or any crap like that. I shall make fire with sticks.

And catch a fish.

And cook it and eat it.

Go now and do something else.

Camping Task List

I can't wait to make sure I tie up the canoe, set up the tent, put up the tarpaulin, gather the firewood, make a tinderbundle, carve a firebow, baseplate, fireshaft, blocking plate, make a fire, set up the lantern for later in the evening, set up the rest of the camp, go fishing, catch a fish, clean the fish, cook the fish, share the fish with the beagle, sit on my chair, have a beer and a cigar, watch the sun go down, watch the stars come out, and go to sleep beside a lake lit up only by the sound of loons in the blackness.

Watch some from the last time I went camping...

Monty Snuffling About

Mungo's Bushcraft Lessons

What? How to make binding material in the woods.
How's that? Sometimes you don't have any rope.
How so? Obtain some thin spruce roots (hint - look for an overturned, but still living tree - less digging that way). Split a thin stick halfway to create a kind of pliers/scraper. Remove the spruce root bark by drawing it carefully through the scraper. Make an incision through the center of the root tip - peel the halves apart. When the split threatens to leave one half thicker than the other, bend out the thicker end to control the split (don't let the split 'run out'). Loop lengths of the split root to the diameter of a cooking pot. Fill the pot 2/3 with water, heat it to boiling over a fire. Fill the pot until full with the ashes of a cooking fire. Immerse the loops of split de-barked root into the pot and leave it to simmer for an hour. The ashes contain caustic substances (lye, etc...) that affect the lignin). Then take it out, straighten it out and dry out over the boughs of a tree. This binding material will remain supple and strong for years. Weave into a weir for catching fish, use to bind lean-to boughs, use to make fish-spears, and much more.

What? How to use an arrangment of sticks to cook a fish over a fire.
How's that? Sometimes you don't have enough cooking pots or you have none at all.
How so? Catch a fish. Use a fishing line. Or use an arrangment of sticks pressed into the shoreline so that a narrow entry permits a fish to enter the fenced in area, drawn by the smell of bait, but so that the narrow entry restricts exit. Or spear one. Anyway, gut and bone the fish - and make 6 holes in the edges of the skin. Thread 3 thin, de-barked sticks to splay out the fish. Partially split a long stick, and wedge the meat into the split - and then tie the end closed with the binding material you made earlier... Rest the long stick against a stone and lean it over a low fire. After a while your dinner will be ready.

Vote NDP

This Monday, voting for the NDP gives support to social justice issues, tells the Liberals they cannot sneak under the wire and the Conservatives that they suck.

Steven Harper is a dangerous person.

Falling banana kills woman

This is an oddly nice story...

Today's Post Hoc checklist

• Check at the end of the work day to ensure that I did not remove the cardboard shirt collar stiffener from my dress shirt when I put it on this morning - DONE.
  
• Order a $2.00 hamburger from the newly discovered cafeteria downstairs at work today, and confirm that it has the texture and pre-stamped quality of a carboard shirt collar stiffener. Notice that the toasted buns tasted very nice and that the burger did not - DONE.
  
• Observe that it took me 7 minutes to drive home from work and rejoice in that fact - DONE.
  
• Prepare to watch Lost tonight and rejoice in that fact - DONE.
  
• Encourage wife to have more than 1.5 hours of sleep tonight - DONE.

My Uncle's Old Band - The Liverpool Roadrunners

The Liverpool Roadrunners - one of Liverpool's best-loved 60s R&B bands

My Uncle John was in this band.