Category: life

Topics concerning that thing known as ‘real life’ and not virtual worlds.

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48% of remaining BC forest to be destroyed for cash

Admittedly, that might be an alarmist headline, but that was my first impression when I read this article on Canada.com: B.C.’s forests open for business: minister. Stan Hagan, who holds the Orwellian title of “Minister of Sustainable Resources Management”, announced today that almost half of British Columbia’s remaining forests are now designated for commercial interests. This means logging and mining, primarily — two of the most destructive of industries.

With this decision, the provincial government is launching a massive attack on the environment. Conservation no longer fits into government plans, as Hagan stated that “to create parks it will have to come out of the working forest and there will have to be justification for it”. Well I’m thrilled that we now have safeguards to prevent people from protecting an irreplacable part of the earth’s ecosystem. Now we have to come up with bloody good reason why the forests shouldn’t be destroyed.

If you care at all about the world’s rainforests, even if you don’t live in BC, send an e-mail to Stan Hagan, BC Minister of Sustainable Resources Management, and tell him what you think of his anti-environmentalist legislation.

Here are some facts and figures about BC rainforest.

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Feeling kinda wacky for an okonomiyaki

Mmm. Pancakes. After all that talk about breakfast foods, I began to think seriously about pancakes. And the most serious of all pancakes is the okonomiyaki — a Japanese pancake. If you’ve ever tried one, you know that it’s the most delicious and complicated pancake ever invented (that I know of). Click here for a recipe and photo.

Also, okonomiyaki rhymes with all kinds of interesting things. I bet you could write oodles of poetry on the subject.

Anyway, my stomach insists that I make one for dinner tonight. Here is my quandry: what to put in it? What do you think? Visit the Cubicle Poll on the left to cast your vote.

Oh, and this is my way of saying that I have nothing to blog about today.

Okonomiyaki update

Well, I’m just about bored enough to do this. I dropped by T and T Supermarket for some supplies, now I have all the stuff I need:

Bonito shavings. They look a lot like wood shavings, but they’re so light, they’ll blow away if you’re not careful. A bonito, apparently, is a dried fish.

Instant dashi powder. Makes a clear fish-based broth.

Dried shrimp.

A jar of kimchi — suey choy in a spicey sauce.

Mayonnaise. I wanted to pick up the brand with the Kewpie doll on it, but couldn’t find it.

Okonomiyaki sauce.

Shiitake mushrooms.

Suey choy cabbage.

Other more ordinary ingredients include: fresh salmon, flour, ginger, and eggs. Time to get to work.

Time passes…

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Cubicle bananas

As River Selkie pointed out in her blog, the common banana is in serious danger of becoming extinct because they have no viable seeds. People have “interfered with them”, in the words of a co-worker. The same co-worker revealed that it’s possible to obtain seeds for dwarf banana plants, and thereby help ensure a bananaful future.

It occurs to me that, if we were truly serious about saving the banana, all cubicle dwellers everywhere should cooperate and set aside a corner of their workspace for a dwarf banana plant. And then, when the economy collapses for lack of bananas, and civilization falls into ruin, we could step in and save the world with our private supply of the pulpy fruit.

If that works out, we could do the same for the ringtailed lemur. Surely we can save a corner in our cubicles for a lemur or two. We could feed them dwarf bananas.

Arctic wolves, too, are becoming a little sparse. They’re too big to fit in the corner, but if we gave them a cubicle of their own, we could feed them banana-fed lemurs.