Scat

There's no scat in this picture, just a sheet web.

Since dogs aren't allowed in the Nature Park, if you narrowly miss stepping in something unmentionable, it is probably scat.
Dog-poo is icky and nasty and full of worms that'll make your child go blind, scat - scientific, information imparting, interesting.

Well, actually it is because all animals have different scat, you can tell what has wandered through. Mostly what we find because it is the most obvious is coyote scat. Today though, since the first programme that is coming up is about animals, I came into the kitchen at work to find poo on the table. Rubber poo, biologically correct, yes in short I discovered that there are people out there who make a living by making and selling pretend poo.

Sadly, we have no raccoon poo. However this did lead us into a discussion about a recipe that Lori used to have for making edible scat. So you mix up all sorts of ingredients, mints for the white bits, Shreddies for the...sticky out bits that look like Shreddies, and then you have poo that children can eat.
Then of course we wondered who in the hell must have come to the conclusion that THAT was a good idea.
It reminded us of when we were little and you could buy packs of sugar fondant cigarettes, or there were chocolate ones covered in rice paper, and bloody horrible chocolate it was too. These were the sweets you didn't want to get, the booby prize, like getting Spangles. They were cheap and they were not very good.

Still, aside from the joys of animal poo, I have written a story today and practised the puppet show. I had done the workshop on puppeteering, so I knew it wasn't going to be easy, but now that I'm actually doing parts in performance, I am getting exactly how hard it is, and I am finding it way more difficult than the acting. Who knew?

Then there's the story. It's something and nothing. Something we will use as part of a programme, and yet nothing worth mentioning. And yet, when I think of all of the things I have written over my years at Mayhem and before, reports, reports to governors, letters, snippets for local papers, flyers, handbooks, short sketches in French and German, I've never wondered before because it was never worth wondering, does it belong to me?

Completely unconnected with work, I see that The Police are rehearsing in secret in North Van as they are going to make some kind of appearance as 'The Police' again. Not much of a secret then.

And on the theme of police, we watched the recent film of Miami Vice. I used to love that programme, the music, the fashion, the casual chic of the whole thing. Yeah well, the film didn't do it for me. I immediately got it into my head that Jamie Foxx shouldn't be Tubbs, instead Isaach de Bankolé, who had a smaller part in this film, but whom I loved from Ghost Dog, should play the role. The part of Castillo - well, no-one but Edward James Olmos can do that.

The music was good, but it didn't have the compulsion of the music on the TV show, I liked most of it, but it made me more nostalgic than energised. And the plot was, well, more like smog than anything else.