October 2016 | A.S. Akkalon

You are what you read

Last night I started reading Ulysses, by James Joyce. It’s been staring at me from my bookshelf for several years now, ever since I came across Modern Library’s list of the 100 best novels and decided to read my way down the list. (I think I got through about a book and a half before giving up. Fortunately I didn’t buy all 100 books in advance.)

I’ve been warned about Ulysses. It’s fat and white, which makes it good at staring accusingly at me from the bookshelf, being judgmental about the fact the spine is still uncreased.

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5 ways to eat your favourite foods absolutely guilt free

Seventy-five percent of people you pass in the street are trying to lose weight. (Like 94% of statistics, this number is entirely fabricated.)

Trying to lose weight sucks for two reasons:

You don’t get to eat food that’s full of empty calories and, face it, that’s most stuff that tastes good, like cookies, ice cream, and apricot pies.
You don’t actually lose weight.

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Ode to tiny flowers

Tiny flowers, especially ones growing all on their own, don’t get nearly as much credit as they deserve. Everyone talks about big flowers like roses and daffodils and lilies, but hardly anyone talks about daisies and… See, I don’t even know the names of other tiny flowers.

Someone should do something about that, so today I’m devoting a whole post to tiny flowers.

I walked outside with my camera to see what tiny flowers I could find. Once you start looking for them it’s amazing how many you see. They grow in the cracks in the pavement, in a fields full of hard stalks of grass, and in wasteland that used to be something and now isn’t.

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How a shark ended my swimming career

When I was six, some bright spark decided to repaint the school swimming pool. The blue background was probably necessary to disguise the yellow water, but it was a pool for children, so they didn’t stop there.

Soon a dozen colourful starfish and octopuses crawled across the pool floor. I was as happy as you can be about cute creatures painted in a pool two degrees above having icebergs. (Actually, it was probably only the urine content that kept the pool from freezing entirely.)

Then there was the shark.

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Brontosaurus is back and he’s bad

I was looking for a picture of Brontosaurus recently (some days you need Brontosaurus) and I made a horrifying discovery: according to random-guy-on-the-web, Brontosaurus hasn’t been a separate genus of dinosaur for over a hundred years.

You heard me. Brontosaurus as we know him does not exist.

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