look out, that one looks angry

Honey Man

Honey stand on the road in Rila, Bulgaria. That is some good honey.

Self Promotion

I have been away for awhile. Not away away but away from writing my blog. Sorry, I will try to be a better blogger.

Now that I am back I would first like to say something nice about my online flipbook making store, Flipbook Empire :

Matt and I started Flipbook Empire a little over a year ago when we discovered how much everyone loved the flipbook invitations we made for my sister's wedding. We have since then made our flipbooks even more beautiful and exciting and have added super awesome notepads with flip-action corners to our store. Flip-action corners!

So you send us your video clip, text, and/or photos and we turn them into flipbooks which are great for invitations, announcements, gifts, promotional materials, and cat toys (says Annie)

Okay, I am finished saying nice things about our store, at least for now.
And now back to Ipigeon.....

Life Lesson #23

If you are on your way to work and you give a thirsty person your favorite orange water bottle, they will run away with it.

Librarian Training

Photo from r.t. Brown on Flikr.com

"The path to becoming a Librarian is a difficult one. Aspirants must not only be strong enough to survive their training, they must possess mental discipline strong enough to fend off the demons and Warp creatures, as these beings see the enhanced form and mind of a Librarian as a rich prize for possession."

book titles for the Batman Early Learner's series

Batman vs. the New Baby Sister

Batman learns to Tie his Shoe

Batman vs. Broccoli

Batman Doesn't Like to Share

Batman and the First Day of School Jitters

Batman vs. the Potty Chair

Batman Goes the The Dentist

A Dream I Had About Cheese

My mom called to inform me that the sliced cheese you can buy in the supermarket is rarely more than 40% cheese. She didn't explain what the other 60% was, maybe plastic. She said that the only place where you can buy 100% real sliced cheese is Wisconsin. Thanks Mom!

Book Review

This is an excellent resource for dealing with special puppets like Loopy the Talking Lion and Chirpy Chick, among others.  A must have for any puppet-master.

Sloth and Popsicle from Carson Mischel on Vimeo.

Batman

Once upon a time Batman was canning pickles with his grandmother when he saw the bat signal blaze across the sky through the open kitchen window.

"Sorry granny, gotta run, my city needs me"

Batman dashed from the room, accidentally knocking one of the jars of pickles to the floor with his cape and leaving his stunned grandmother dripping with pickle juice.

a couple of minutes later Batman returned to kitchen where his grandmother was still mopping up the mess he had made earlier.

"I guess it was just a car pulling into the driveway." he said in a very disappointed tone

Batman's grandmother gave him some homemade snack mix to cheer him up.

--The End

Street Interviews

"I was buying fishing tackle in this little shop by the river about twelve years ago when the store clerk told me that the world was going to end today. I was a little skeptical but I wrote down the date anyway. Supposedly, this is where I am to meet Jesus. This morning I woke up and looked at my calender and thought, 'its a nice sunny day, what the hell, I will wait around for awhile, see if he shows up." --Monkey

Beware, it's a long one

If you stand between the aisles 327.43 g37d and 330.1 k44w you will see a door. It is a tall wooden door with four glass panes that make up the top half--not unlike most of the other doors in the building. What makes this door different from every other door in the building is that it is never used and it is never talked about. It is simply treated as if it doesn't exist.

The closed stacks are in the basement of the library. It is musty and warm; no windows, just rows and rows of mechanical shelving full of books that are not popular enough to be shelved in the rooms for the public to browse yet they still retain some tidbit of information that might be of use to someone, someday. It is an inherently mysterious place that surrounds this seemingly unnecessary door.

Earlier today, as I was shelving the cooking section of the closed stacks, a small key slipped out of one of the books, bounced off of my shoe, and landed on the concrete floor with a small clang. I set down my handful of books and picked up the key. Looking back, I don't know what made me decide to try the key in the mystery door. But I did, and the door swung open.

I took a step forward then hesitated, concerned that my neglected shelving truck might give away my absence. My anxiety was short lived.  I quickly realized that I probably wouldn't be missed considering most of my co-workers still don't even know my name and that the last hour of shelving had been growing increasingly boring.

I walked through the entry-way which led directly to a long dark hallway followed by a short flight of stairs which took me somewhere between the basement and the first floor. At the top of the stairs was an elevator (how strange) next to which was a glowing button. Seeing as the downward button was my only option, I pressed it and the door silently opened. I must have been some time since the elevator had been operated because it squealed and jolted as it descended. When the elevator finally came to a stop and the door slid open I was immediately struck by a cloud of dewy humidity fogging my glasses and an overwhelming smell of chlorine which stung my nose. The whooshing sound of falling water surrounded me making any other noises (if there were any) completely imperceptible. Disoriented, and a little light-headed from the sudden blast of warm air, I pulled off my glasses and wiped them on my shirt. I returned my glasses to my face and gasped at what I could now see was a incredibly vast underground cavern filled from floor to ceiling with water slides and pools of swirling water. The slides twisted and turned, whirled and looped, spilling water in all directions. Some ran along the ceiling, some along the walls, some curled upside down, some ran through tunnels, and others seemed to dip below the water's surface and ascend again in shapes that would require a defiance of gravity. There were so many that it was impossible to tell where one ended and the next began. What a wonderful discovery! An underground cavern of water slides  just below the library!

After several minutes of staring in awe, my excitement was diminished slightly when I realized I was late for my next shift. I reluctantly stepped back into the elevator and as the door closed and the elevator began to jerk upwards I put the key in my pocket. I smiled to myself, knowing I wasn't going to return that key to where I found it.  

Some things to consider about hamsters

Never feed hamsters candy or chocolate because it can get stuck in the hamster's cheek pouches

Hamsters have hearts the size of a grain of sand and are therefore encapable of love. No matter how many strawberries you give your hamster, he will never love you back.

Hamsters living during the Pleistocene era were five feet tall, weighed around 250 pounds, and ate bats.

When a hamster bites your finger it hurts.

Hamsters laugh we just can't hear it; when we laugh they can't hear us.

In 1966 a hamster named Peter was sent to Mars in a space shuttle because scientists wanted to study the effects of Mars on hamsters.

Tomato Plant Post #1

Today I counted how many brown dogs walked past the front yard (seven) and how many times the fire truck drove by with it's siren on (five). 

Another one of my yellow flowers opened up today. Someday I think I would like to learn a second language.

It rained a lot this week.

Haiku

staff party fall-out
cauliflower all alone
veggie forsaken

MEGALODON

I am tired of prehistoric animals like the giant sloth and the megalodon being overshadow by loser dinosaurs. Why didn't any of my teachers in elementary school ever tell me that there were sharks that weighed up to 50 tons roaming our seas 25 million years ago. They ate whales!

Illustration by, Timothy J. Bradley from "Paleo Sharks: survival of the strangest"  

Dear Sunburn

It is time for you to go away.
I don't mean to be rude but you have overstayed your welcome.
To be completely honest with you, I never really like having you around.
You are kind of a party-pooper.

Best Wishes,
Carson

When carousels were still merry-go-rounds

Today I found that my childhood has a Wikipedia page.

I have this very shadowy and magical memory of a place where Snoopy made perpetual laps around a tightrope strung from the ceiling on his unicycle in a jaw-dropping feat of balance. A red and gold carousel provides a tinkling soundtrack to this memory and sticky, honeyed hands from unending sopapillas provides the smell. There was Skee Ball. There was a talking wishing well, with water the color of Windex, that swallowed hundereds of our pennies. There was a jail cell with rubber bars, roaming mariachis, and magic shows. This is one of those childhood memories that is so shadowy and magical that I have often questioned if I ever really experienced this place and if I did, how distant are my memories from reality. It turns out they are not so distant after all.

This place was called Casa Bonita and it has a Wikipedia page. It was a mexican restaurant that lived in my hometown for a short period of time in the 1980s. There is still one location in Colorado and, although I would like to visit, I know that experiencing it as an adult could never live up to my memories of being there as a child.

Image from www.artifacting.com/blog/2006/04/10/la-experiencia-de-bonita-del-casa/

Pink Ghosts Love Sunshine

Knowing that it was going to be a rare sunshiny day in Portland, I decided to venture out in hopes of catching a glimpse of the elusive Pink Ghost. A sighting of the Pink Ghost was reported several weeks ago by a group of mohawked teenagers on their way to a rock and roll show. One of the kids claimed to have seen a pink blur out of the corner of their eye  in the yellow church on 39th ave. but when they turned to look, the ghost had retreated. I decided to try my luck at the scene of this last sighting and lucky for all of you, I had my camera.

Tomato Plant's Blog

I am an amateur gardener. Up until this year I have played it safe with pots of flowers that I was familiar with, flowers that I knew would grow and bloom and give me a sense of accomplishment. But this year I was inspired to plant some lettuce and a tomato plant. I have invited my tomato plant to keep us updated on its growth this spring and summer as an occasional guest blogger. I can't guarantee that the tomato plant is any good at blogging but it is excited about becoming a part of the internet community so stay tuned...

I believe a robot would be better at my job than I am. Here is why,

• Occasionally my mind wanders and I put books in the wrong place. A robot's mind never wanders.

• I am too short to reach the top shelf. Robots do not require stools.

• Sometimes I think my hands are bigger than they really are and I try to grab a giant pile of books and they fall on the floor. This is both unproductive and embarrassing.Robots do not know embarrassment nor do they have hands.
  

• Although I am an excellent alphabetizer I think a robot would be a superior alphabetizer.