Greetings from Alternate Reality!

Eeewwww! Mucky! Poor bear…

Did I miss a meeting? Since when do polar bears swim in the Everglades!

Finding out for hisself that it is not easy…

It’s hard to swim in grass!

Eeeewww… that’s nasty!

It looks like an algal bloom (too much algae in the water). Ick. I know polar bears are deadly, but I just want to SNORGLE HEEEEM!

hehehe camille… on my first look, i thought “lime sherbert!!!” anyone else for the “impending doom” tag?

OMG – this is so funny I am going to have to print a copy and put it up in my cubicle.

I call it “polar bear in a sea of green”

omg, is it seriously Knut? I saw this picture somewhere else recently, although I can’t remember where, but it didn’t say it was Knut. I remember lingering over it for a long time–it’s a really, really pretty shot.

Has anyone else noticed that Knut maintains even to this day (or at least the last time I saw pics of him) the cutest face you have ever seen on a polar bear? It wasn’t just babyface, man, it was god-given adorableness. It transcended the age barrier. Like Beck, Knut will always look like a significantly younger version of himself.

Seems like Knut is often in dirty water; yes, he remains cute in spite of it.

What pray tell is this sweet little baby swimming in? He acts as if he likes it. Love the darling top half of his face. The pea soup water is disgusting.

The polary bear escaped the fridigedy dair!

XD

My nose just spontaneously shrivelled up and fell right off my face at the thought of being snoot-first in a vat of wasabi. Thanks, now I’m gonna have to get a new nose, and I heard they aren’t cheap!

Although, with this gaping hole in the middle of my face, I’ll be a hit at Halloween.

[Sure, just hold one of those tea-light candles in your mouth. - Ed.]

[Egad, I'm grim... - Ed.]

It’s obviously algae, could have been taken in my back yard during the

I’ll get the life raft. Hang in there, Judy, help is on the way.

*whew*

Knut rises from green depths.
“Where has Friday Haiku gone?”
Slips slowly back under…

(@ Theo — wow — that’s a nice accessory to have !!)

I’m with cath – I’m pretty sure that’s duckweed. Could also be Wolffia, another free-floating aquatic flowering plant that’s even tinier than duckweed (genus Lemna). During the summer either (or both) can coat the entire surface of a pond. This photo is exactly what an adorable polar bear swimming around in them would look like.

For something different, out this blog, with photos of some of the weirdest plants on earth: http://erdemahmet.blogspot.com/2008/01/dnyann-en-srad-bitkileri.html

This is the direction in which my geekiness/nerdiness/dorkiness goes.

[Ditto on the duckweed, btw. Not normally a polar bear thing, but makes for quite a dramatic photo. - Ed.]

Looks like some sort of newfangled polar bear spa treatment.

Definitely Knut – cavorting in duckweed: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthpicturegalleries/6206588/Animal-pictures-of-the-week-18-September-2009.html?image=4

Knut’s very own spa day
sea weed wrap totally wrong
bring out the blue rinse

Where has haiku gone?
could be haiku hiatus
someone miss the boat?

on a trip to gastonia, nc last year we could not find a single starbucks, nor any other coffeeshop, at all..it made for a very long, very sleepy weekend.

Yes, with marmidar-you download then upload then esplode.

I think the green is Larks vomit, my favourite flavour from the chocolate selection box.

Sorry for the double post, I am on my brother inlaw’s ancient puter

Knut now has a girlfriend who, so far, has only swatted him once. She is a year older than his 2 years. I hope this will normalize his life. With his beloved foster-father dead and no momma around, he needs some companionship. I think in the wild, cubs stay with their moms for 3 years. Knut won’t be sexually mature for another few years so not pitter-patter of tiny paws yet, but I really hope that bear companionship helps him psychologically. He is a darling bear and really deserves some TLC.

Sorry for going on about this orphan bear, Knut’s always been special to me.

Haha! Kudos to Rachael and Bryn.

@Judy and rrk: LOL!

Someone ought to skim his pool. He’s still cute, though.

This is just the best thread since oh… the last one, great job Peeps!

I wanna brush aside the green crumbs and kees his fuzzy head…Lookit those darlingk round earses! He actually looks remarkably clean, aside from the green stuff.

Darn, camouflage isn’t working today….

I’m sick and have a fever. But NOMTOM has made my day, again. And yes, I can relate. At the moment, polar sharks swimming in pea soup sound like something that is very real. In a feverish dream at least. Thanks, NOMTOM, I owe you one. Keep them coming.

Oh…And I am totally addicted to the “Chocolatier” series of games. In the third one, “Decadence By Design,” you learn a recipe for wasabi cashew truffles.

I WANT THAT RECIPE. For real!

this is such a SAD picture. i cant believe some of the comments, and im not talking about the people trying too hard to be funny.

this picture makes my heart cry. i wish instead of taking a picture of the liil guy, the photographer would help the bear out of that hell.

pesto bear!!

[Ooh, that gives me recipe ideas... - Ed.]

“People trying too hard to be funny” and yet, you did it with such ease and grace.

Knut tries a pop-art spin on Annie Liebovitz’s famous portrait of Whoopie Goldberg submerged in milk bath….

skippymom: I remember about the wasabi eating away your nose. Bummer. I hope this does not turn into a fiasco. Please say “hi! kiss, kiss” to skippy for me. I’d say hi from my cat SamKitty too but that would just be lying. He doesn’t care. He’s just all about himself.

I looooove green tea ice-cream.

@ Skippymom: morning !! I can suggest the following (sort of a “consolation prize”)… if you haven’t already ( in the past) I spent a good 20-25 min or so browsing in the C/O Glossary (& be sure to open/ click on words in blue; they’ll go to outrageously cute items….)or izzat something you already knew about?

Another very useful & exceedingly cool place is FreeRice.com.

It’s set up like a simple school vocabulary quiz, with 4 multiple-choices from which to select. It begins to customize to your skill level & gradually becomes more challenging for you. THE COOLEST part, is that somehow your participation provides charitable food to places in Third-World where people are starving.
It has affiliations w/ both the United Nations & with Harvard. I’ve got really extreme vocab ability (so the standardized tests always said) & it stumps me & keeps getting just a bit more strenuous & fun … Win-win for rice donations !!

GOOD !! glad you tried it & glad you enjoyed it !!!!

Noelegy, my degree is actually MSLIS: Master of Science in Library and Information Science. But it’s been called MLS for so long, that’s how we tend to refer to it. I have a young assistant who’s in library school right now, and her program has some name I can’t even remember.
I was an English major too, and my little saying about it is that one can look at it either of two ways: You can do anything with that/What the hell are you going to do with that? Doesn’t Garrison Keillor have a running thing about the Society of English Majors?

@ Noelegy: yup, he does — Hang on, I’m checkin’ it out, ‘cuz long, long ago, I mentally did the figurin’ & realized, that not only did he refer to English majors…but the name of the supposed group is also a clever acronym …rather like Theo’s manner of hiding something *even better* behind the thing that you see ….BBS…..

Resriechan: I ruv you! You’re so…weird! Your posts are so…cool!

@ Q o D: um…thanks for the rove; returned !!

(should I worry, about the “weird”? or just wander around, remaining blissfully ignorant? )

(whew. THAT’s a relief !! ). So noted !!!!

How did the afternoon get away from me, & there were 22 comments and WINSTON before I knew it????? Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!
(leaping over to pet Winston, thru’ the computer screen)

Santa – Did they say why, Knut, why they want to terminate my command?
Knut – I was sent on a classified mission, sir.
- It’s no longer classified, is it? Did they tell you?
- They told me that you had gone totally insane, and that your methods were unsound.
- Are my methods unsound?
- I don’t see any method at all, sir.
- I expected someone like you. What did you expect? Are you an assassin?
- I’m a polar bear.
- You’re neither. You’re an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill. I’ve seen horrors… horrors that you’ve seen. But you have no right to call me a toy pusher, a business destroyer. You have a right to stop me. You have a right to do that… but you have no right to judge me. It’s impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face… and you must make a friend of horror and mortal terror. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared. I remember when I was with Toys R Us. Seems a thousand centuries ago. We opened the doors on Christmas Eve at 4:00AM. We went into the back to restock the Tickle Me Elmos and this old man came running after us and he was crying. We went back there and there were two dozen shoppers crushed. There they were in a pile. A pile of toy shoppers. And I remember… I… I cried. I never want to forget it. And then I realized… These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love… but they had the strength… the strength… to do that. To win we would need to give the toys away. I thought that I had ten divisions of elves like those men we could build the toys for the year by late September, and distribute them in less than a day. You have to have elves who are moral… and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to make toys and give away without feeling… without passion… without judgment… without judgment. Because it’s judgment that defeats us…

[I too have seen the horrors you've seen, through different eyes - Ed.]

Actually to me it looks like maybe sumone has just mowed and thats the grass particles?

It’s like a combination of two little poems in one picture:

Algy had a bear
The bear grew bulgy
The bulge was Algy

Algy had a bath
The bath grew bilgy
The bilge was algae

@ RevWaldo: I deeply hope that you have now found some measure of healing.

@ Mary:

1) The CHARMS OF Duckweed? wow.
2) I looked over the link & particularly enjoyed the item entitled “Practical Duckweed”. Really got the brain headed in an entirely new direction than it has ever been before …………..like, to-tally.