Snow and shadows

Snow seems to do extraordinary things to humans -- cause projectile fights, close airports, that sort of thing, but I rather like it. There are new friends to play with:

old friends just back from hotter climes:

a refreshing lack of Saturday afternoon riffraff:

and ample opportinuty for absurdist signage.

Snow!

Here we go again -- it's officially cold, and the human is finding better and better excuses not to ride to work -- though paradoxically he seems less worried about doing so late at night on machines belonging to street furniture monopolies...
The more fashion-conscious amongs our four-legged friends may be feeling the need for one of these.
Not sure if that will be much help for this fine specimen, though I certainly wouldn't mess with it!

Not all snow is static

or pride (and a cold bottom in an unheated loo) comes before a fall!

Snow falling on Vélibs

and on secret Parisian gardens...

and on other vegetation...

...but remember folks: keep off the grass!

Of extraordinary derailleurs, and seals caught drinking champagne from sheepskin slippers...

I'm sure there's a link somewhere!

The Hosts! The Hosts!

My last batch of science-fictional friends had barely finished their cafeteria antics when news arrived of this most excellent show by the inimitable Wade. Good fun was had by all, and it's a fitting sendoff from a neighborhood that both the human and I -- in agreement for once -- are very sad to leave.

Robots in Ukranian peasant costume, you might say -- or a one-night stand between Daleks and Kulaks!

I'm not Saussure about that

(with apologies to one of the more hilariously grumpy members of the medical fraternity!)

O tempura! O mores!

Not battered Japanese, sadly, but almost as fluffy.

It wasn't the first time I'd passed by the monstrosity above, though it had been quite a while, and it was perhaps the fact that I was returning from a successful mission to retrieve quite a nice art-deco sideboard from a rather tacky exectutive housing estate that made the stuck-on columns stick out all the more.

That and the fact that the polystyrene core is showing through the imitation danstone effect veneer in places, lending the joint an air of rather more genteel decay than it deserves. I doubt he was thinking of small-time gambling dens in suburban Sydney, but I suspect this isn't what Albert Speer meant by his theory of ruin value.