No Topic

[Svenskaflicka]

A fucking SKUNK!

ROFL

ROFL

ROFL

 

[Guest]

On top of that, there's the font size thingy. I fixed it (on the txt file attached - just copy/paste) but really, I don't see much benefit of using a table, with the layout you chose. There's only 1 thing on the right side, and that would have worked better is it was in a continuous line with the elements from the left...

Thanks Lauren
ganna work on it and make it 'mo bettah' sometime later.. i took out some and wanted to add more.. oh bother bother bother.. another time.

 

[cantdog]

It's like north Germany. The cold, she's over! Everybody get out and wear as little as possible!

And Maine is so third-world; we have a significant tourist industry. There's a little resentment of it, but it makes the wheels turn and the registers ring.

A bright red plastic lobster--
Usually quite large,
Which you can get with Visa, check,
Cash or Master Charge!

And here's another item
'Twill set you back a small sum....
A scented pillow with the words:
"For you I Pine, I even Bawl Some!"

She makes her yearly income
Before the Autumn rain,
Tacky trinkets to the Tourists--
Exploiting the coast of Maine!

cantdog

 

[ABSTRUSE]

It's like north Germany. The cold, she's over! Everybody get out and wear as little as possible!

And Maine is so third-world; we have a significant tourist industry. There's a little resentment of it, but it makes the wheels turn and the registers ring.

A bright red plastic lobster--
Usually quite large,
Which you can get with Visa, check,
Cash or Master Charge!

And here's another item
'Twill set you back a small sum....
A scented pillow with the words:
"For you I Pine, I even Bawl Some!"

She makes her yearly income
Before the Autumn rain,
Tacky trinkets to the Tourists--
Exploiting the coast of Maine!

cantdog

Brilliant!
I do want to visit there some day, almost made it last year. The husband and his family used to go there every year.
I've been to Cape Cod, but that's the furthest north other than Canada, when the parents took me to see the Falls.

 

[cantdog]

I recommend the place, even if you have to endure the tourism industry to be here. I hope, with the family history, you will have a good clear idea where to head for. Perhaps even a retreat all staked out?

The thing which makes me live here is Northern people. I find northerners to be congenial. I have more in common with folks for whom the seasons have been pronounced and the world not necessarily designed for you.

It is uninhabitable here in winter, for at least a month. When I went to New Mexico, it was wintertime. "How are you going to get back?" they asked. "Bus to Portland, dogsled from theah," I told 'em. I like to reinforce the idea that we are utterly godforsaken. But I can't feature living anyplace not northern.

 

[cheerful_deviant]

Brilliant!
I do want to visit there some day, almost made it last year. The husband and his family used to go there every year.
I've been to Cape Cod, but that's the furthest north other than Canada, when the parents took me to see the Falls.

Maine is very beautiful, most of it, that is. I used to live up there but I didn't live on the coast, I lived in lumber country. Trees, papermills and blackflies.

The coast is very lovely but I agree it is becoming a bit of a tourist trap. The wilderness north/west of Millinocket is also lovely if you're into getting away from it all. I've spent a few summer vacations canoeing on the rivers up there and hiking the mountains.

One peice of advice... bring Off!

 

[ABSTRUSE]

I bitch about the cold too, but I love having 4 seasons. I've always loved the northern states, especially in the fall.
I find northeners more practical, but southerners are so wonderfully warm and hospitable.

 

[cantdog]

The Deev, once again, is correct!

The rage this year is some stuff called Green Ban, which is "natural" and "herbal" and doesn't have the DEET that the most effective blackfly repellents always used to have. DEET is capable of softening some plastics! Probably not good to inhale or ingest, therefore, and some people are sensitive to it.

Green Ban doesn't work very well for some people, though, a matter of skin chemistry. It does for me, but I don't eat bananas if the summer is coming on. They render me yummy or something.

For real biting insects, so thick you believe yourself to be hallucinating, try Labrador. Interior Labrador is still barely populated. You simply can't describe the astounding thick clouds of ravenous bugs. There is a long season up there without them. It's called winter. It deserves that name. But the people are northern and the Cree and French and so on is neat to hear.

Love the woods. When I was a teenager, no place in the state was more than twenty or twenty-five minutes from Real Woods. Not so now, but we still retain enough of it to get lost in. Lakes and woods, miles and miles. Luxury.

And, like, yeah, the coast. That's beautiful, but you have to mentally subtract the signs and shops sometimes. I've seen worse touristy places. It was difficult to be sure you were out of "tourist Paris," for instance. Amsterdam has a district, and so does Hamburg, which seems much more rapacious than any we have, even at our worst.

But enough about me. (That's a pun.)

 

[Guest]

But enough about me. (That's a pun.)

Brilliant.

Perdita

 

[ABSTRUSE]

(Hello Perdita)

I've read about the blackflies, I would just drape myself in netting. I hear Ongunquit is getting pricey. How are things in Freeport? Wasn't Bush sr. selling his house in Kennebunkport?

 

[cheerful_deviant]

(Hello Perdita)

I've read about the blackflies, I would just drape myself in netting. I hear Ongunquit is getting pricey. How are things in Freeport? Wasn't Bush sr. selling his house in Kennebunkport?

I don't know about Ongunquit, check with cantdog, he would probablly know better.

But Kennebunk is BIG BIG money. Vacation spot for old money.

Freeport is ground zero for tourist-trap/yuppie shopping. Plastic lobsters and moose t-shirts by the thousands.

I would recommend going farther up the coast, Boothbay Harbor is nice, or at least it was last time I was there. Bar Harbor is nice too but it's a little better know so it might be getting a little touristy.

What do you think cantdog?

 

[cantdog]

Most of the beaches on the Atlantic coast are down Ogunquit way. My favorite beach in the state, ocean now, is Reid State Park in Arrowsic, which is to say Georgetown, which is not an expensive area. It sits very close to Boothbay Harbor, in fact. But most beaches are between Ogunquit and Portland, very crowded and so touristy that they seem like a midway at a fair, some of them.

But that gives them a Jersey-shore kind of ambience, which people find homey.

Reid 's beach is as good, as regards being a beach, and every bit as bone-chilling to swim at. And surrounded by Maine at its New Englandy best.

I think the culture here partakes of New England south and west of a line from about Rockland (North Atlantic Blues Festival,yahoo!) to Gilead on Route 2 at the New Hampshire border, and of Atlantic Canada north and east of that line. Then there's the Valley, the valley of the St. John in the far north, which is the original Acadia from which the Louisiana cajuns derive. Most people there in the Valley spoke only French in 1957 when I went up with my grandfather.

I live in the middle of the state, so Reid is easier for me to get to than Kennebunk or Wells Beach or Ogunquit or Old Orchard Beach.

But the beaches are just a bad idea. The Gulf Stream shifts out away from the coast of the U.S. at about Hatteras and again hits the mainland at Prince Edward Island, where the wateris warm and the seasons balmy as a result. You can swim in the ocean at Prince Edward Island, but here! My God. It never warms up. Half an hour in the water and you radiate cold, like a refrigerator or a block of dry ice, for a long time, even if the air temperature is eighty.

And, too, most of the coast is not beach. Beach is not Maine coastline. That's where Bar Harbor and that area around Acadia National Park comes in. Fjords, cliffs, and such. Glacial pebble beaches like the Seawall. Pemaquid, Bailey Island, Isle au Haut, Quoddy Head, Harpswell, Southwest Harbor, Boothbay, George's Bay, all those places and most any spot between have the rough, rocky, primal, elemental feel that is the real Maine coast. There might be six real sandy beaches in the whole state.

I like to hit Seawall (near Bar Harbor and Southwest Harbor) in the fall and sit on the cliffs to watch a fall storm beat waves on it.


The shopping at Freeport is of two kinds, the moose-and-lobster places, which you can avoid anywhere, although a lot of local artists use places like that to get their work out, and then the outlets.

L.L. Bean, Dansk, and so on, have outlet stores all over Freeport. Big places, good stuff, fun shopping.

Old money is in Southwest Harbor and used to be at Bar Harbor when Mr. Rockefeller was there. Other enclaves are Kennebunkport, Bernard on the Island (where Julia Child and Richard Bissell met, famously), Brooksville on the Blue Hill peninsula...

But we do not raise our prices on their account. We ignore celebrities and allow them their privacy because that's the way people are supposed to act. There has always been hostility toward Martha Stewart, but she acted so bitchy and condescending. Rich people just get one if they want one, anyway.

You can't cater to them except with an offer of real quality. There are some amazing world class boatbuilders and sail lofts and whatnot in the state, for instance.

But if there is enough sheer mass of non-superrich, ordinary tourists, the price of everything goes up, seasonally.

Okay, here's a footnote about being a fireman in Maine in the winter:

 

[ABSTRUSE]

Cantdog, thanks for all the great info.
I can't imagine having to fight a fire in that, we had very bitter cold this year and I always felt terrible for those poor guys having to be out in that, especially with the water and ice.
Are you a fireman by any chance?

 

[cantdog]

Was for twenty years.

You do freeze. But you get to tear things up with axes.

 

[ABSTRUSE]

Was for twenty years.

You do freeze. But you get to tear things up with axes.

I tip my cigar to you my friend. It's an underpaid and underespected job.

what do you do now, carve tiny lobster traps for tourists like me?...LOL.

 

[Guest]

I like firemen.

Seriously, besides being incredibly sexy, they do one of the most admirable jobs going.

Respect!

Lou

 

[cantdog]

I like 'em, too, but I had to learn how. Rowdy lot. When you have each other's lives in your hands, it makes a bond. I wave to children still, but their mothers frown and pull them behind their skirts for a lecture on strangers. When I did it from the fire engine, they pointed me out to their children and had them wave.

I miss being a hero to children.

I work in a church now. I keep the books and put out the newsletters and bulletins. They hire atheists, which is good of them.

 

[ABSTRUSE]

I like 'em, too, but I had to learn how. Rowdy lot. When you have each other's lives in your hands, it makes a bond. I wave to children still, but their mothers frown and pull them behind their skirts for a lecture on strangers. When I did it from the fire engine, they pointed me out to their children and had them wave.

I miss being a hero to children.

I work in a church now. I keep the books and put out the newsletters and bulletins. They hire atheists, which is good of them.

I saw you as more of a craftsman myself, but you are still an awesome dude.

 

[cantdog]

Thank you, abs, thanks, Lou. All my craftmanlike stuff is avocational. I would dislike to be obliged to do it. It stops being play, then, as Mr. Clemens remarked.

 

[ABSTRUSE]

Quiet night here.
Sun's going down, kids will be in soon.
Hopefully the sandman will get here early.
Supposed to rain tomorrow.
I should be writing, but I'm not.
My cough won't go away, but my voice is deeper, when it's there.
I should go to bed early tonite.
I love to ramble when I'm bored.

 

[Guest]

Quiet night here.
Sun's going down, kids will be in soon.
Hopefully the sandman will get here early.
Supposed to rain tomorrow.
I should be writing, but I'm not.
My cough won't go away, but my voice is deeper, when it's there.
I should go to bed early tonite.
I love to ramble when I'm bored.

babe.. ah.. erm.. you ramble when youre excited too... just a heads up.. *grin*

 

[cantdog]

I see you got the table under control in the sig, vella me gal.

 

[Guest]

I see you got the table under control in the sig, vella me gal.

about time huh cant babe.. but in under one day.. its a banner achievement.. for a blond

 

[mcfbridge]

about time huh cant babe.. but in under one day.. its a banner achievement.. for a blond

Smart blonde. Hmmmm

 

[cantdog]

She's no dummy, or I mean, she's not dumb. No matter how fair.

Sorry to turn you in, vella

*psst* it's "vagaries"