I’ve been waking at 3am every day for a month or so to take the puppy out for her mid-night business. Somehow appropriate for a dog named Minuit.

Rocket Robin Hood and "Missiles" Maid Marian

Rising from sleep at that hour seems to lock random bits of dream into my conscious, usually in an ever-repeating loop.

Last night’s random bit was a ditty I composed many, many years ago for a small university humour publication. And now it’s stuck in my head.

Better it be stuck in yours. Here it is in entirety. Sung, for some unfathomable reason, to the chorus from the Rocket Robin Hood theme song.

We are German. We speak German.
We’ve got bods like Uma Thurman.
We’re known around the world for common sense,
For sausages, Mercedes Benz.
From the Baltic to the Danube to the Rhine,
We’ll apologize for nineteen thirty nine.
So hoist your beer and raise a cheer for…
Germany! Now! Let’s! Eat!

Tomorrow’s 3am gift from me to you: one can sing the lyrics of Rule, Britannia! to the tune of Oh! Susanna, and vice versa.

You run into some bad icons in the computer business. Little guiding images that look like nothing, guide you nowhere, and delete all your files when you click them.

There are also many antiquated icons, but at least they once meant something.

While working on Carole’s Mac the other day, I came across this gem:

That icon is pretty much ubiquitous in the Mac world and, I think we can agree, seems to represent a circle-embossing application of some sort.

But we’d be wrong. It’s a hard drive. A necessary piece of hardware to be sure, but not one that nine out of ten people have ever laid eyes upon. Mac owners are contractually forbidden, under pain of the installation of a second mouse button, from opening their sleek designer cases to even peek at such a thing. It’s like using an image of a carburettor, speaking of antiquated things, to identify the ignition switch in your car.

So what does it do? Oh, that’s the icon you click to look at your files or find applications. What happens when you drag it to the Trash Bin? I’m too terrified to try, but I have visions of the drive shooting out of the case with shards of plastic and aluminum spraying into my eyes.

It’s not often I can say this, but Microsoft wins this user interface battle. The Start button makes a heckuva lot more sense than a diagram of a computer’s innards.

Warning. The following is intended for mature audiences only. Reader discretion is advised.

This horrible fiend will devour your family whole, raze your village to the ground, and, to add insult to injury, raise it's leg on your smouldering remains.

Just suppose, for the sake of argument, that you are contemplating introducing into your home a juvenile canis lupus familiaris, or “puppy” as they are sometimes called, mere moments before the gruesome demise of the speaker.

I feel I must caution against such a tactic in the most fierce manner possible. Should you follow my advice, you may thank me for saving your very life some day. Gift certificates from Tim Horton’s are also appreciated in lieu of grovelled thanks.

Did you know that your so-called puppy will…

• relieve itself multiple times per day, frequently in an inaccessible corner?
• wail and shriek at unimaginable amplitude if left alone for more than thirty seconds?
• require 3am trips outdoors regardless of the temperature or inclement weather?

This raccoon simulacrum has died a tortured death. In the glowing eyes of the terrible brute you can read it's mind: "You're next."

• down its own droppings with relish and then lick your lips?
• compel you to exercise it many times a day at length merely to temper its inexhaustible energy?
• drag you along the street on your leash as it pursues said exercise?

Seemingly at rest, the fiendish monster calculates its next bloody conquest.

• demand to be fed amounts of costly rations quite out of proportion to its size?
• chew on furniture, clothing, electrical wiring, and you yourself, every waking moment?
• destroy your possessions, drapes, and sanity with its exuberant leaps?

Avoid the scourge! Neuter or spay your adult companion, whether or not they’re a dog. We simply cannot risk the alternative.

While this does fall into the category Saccharine Cutesy-wootsy, I’m still rather proud of my sculpture, “Smoochers”, presented to Carole  on Christmas morning.

Note the correct eye colour and correction for height using the old tippy-toe-on-shoe technique. Many of the pieces are dented with my eight-year-old toothmarks.

Now if only slight gusts of wind, such as those from an exhale from twenty paces, didn’t disintegrate the thing.

I’ve signed up for the CRWR243 Writing Drama course up at the College this term. It needs just a couple more students to register by Friday or it’ll be cancelled. Why not take the opportunity to learn to write a play? Maybe even that movie script you’ve been thinking about all these years. You know the one: where the aliens raise the dead to warn us that humanity is on the verge of creating a weapon that will explode the universe?

Oh wait, that movie’s already been made.

In any case, the course is every Wednesday evening from 7 to 10pm. We’re even all going out to see a play at the Guild in a couple of weeks.

The instructor is Patti Flather, and if you have questions, contact her at gwaandakfoo@quuxklondiker.com.

Hope to see you next Wednesday.

I once tried to find an air conditioner in December. This winter, in the same month, I tried for a dehumidifier.

Not easy to find in the Yukon, those. The back wall of Canadian Tire has stacks upon racks of humidifiers, but very little selection of the “de-” variety. Desperate to foist off the ones they did have, I got a one-third discount.

This house doesn’t breathe properly. For one thing, I’ve never, ever, not once had a static electric shock in the place, summer or winter. But when condensation started building up on the back walls of the closet, I figured there was a problem.

The dehumidifier now hisses away in its corner, sucking a few litres of water out of the air each day, and yet I still can’t summon a spark by scuffling along on the carpet.

How different from my youth in Ottawa, where winter was generally spent dodging metal in the apartment. Except for that one time I got brand new cross-country skis and thought I’d try them out first on the living room carpet. After a few in-place strides, I took them off and reached to turn off the room’s lights.

About the last thing I remember of that incident was a three-foot blue bolt that led from my fingertip to the light switch plate screw.

Known for our butterfingers, Carole and I both ordered OtterBox protective cases for our mobile gewgaws. Hers was the lighter Commuter model for her HTC Android phone which even works with the swing-out keyboard, but I got the indestructo Defender case for my iTouch.

iTouch self portrait. Background courtesy of the Home Hardware lumber desk. Splayed-finger hand modelling by Dave.

It’s made of two snap-on hard plastic shells (one with a built-in screen protector) and a grippy rubber sleeve that stretches over the whole thing, without blocking any of the important orifices (including the Apple logo on the back).

The case actually makes it much easier to grasp the thing, because the iTouch is actually a little too thin, if you ask me. Beefing it up with the OtterBox gives it a much better “heft.”

I haven’t tested its durability yet, and hope never to, but it seems solid. I recommend it highly, and, even though the company is in the States, they managed to deliver all the way up here in only a couple of days for ten bucks.

Now that I’ve caught up to the previous decade by getting an iTouch for Christmas (and a Kindle for my birthday that’s stuck in some shipping department somewhere), I realized that this blog was impossible to read on a mobile device. It’s merely difficult to read on a desktop computer.

So, I installed the WordPress Mobile Pack plugin, and now it should automatically display a much simplified version if you visit using your mobile doohickey. If not, you can always reach the mobile version at m.whathesaid.ca.

Everything in life can be explained with three circles. Except bicycles.

As I tweeted on a frosty Christmas afternoon, Santa tucked an iPod Touch into my stocking. I had explained earlier to Carole — Santa’s agent — that I “needed” one for a) a mobile app project that I start in the new year, b) translation for our upcoming Korea & Japan trip, and c) because it’s totally cool and doesn’t require a soul-crushing contract with Bell Immobility.

So now, what with Carole buying a reconditioned MacBook Pro from her school, our house literally hums with operating systems:

• iOS,
• Mac OS X,
• Android,
• virtualized Windows XP/Vista/7,
• two flavours of Ubuntu Linux, and
• whatever it is that’s running the kettle.

All we need now is a Blackberry and the thing that Palm is grasping as an emergency flotation device and the circle will be complete. Heaven help us when it comes time to upgrade.

And people claim that English is a difficult language to learn.

Our weird temperatures seem to have broken the Weather Channel’s forecast:

Does the absence of temperature indicate Absolute Zero? Better break out the woolies in that case.