elfs | Two recent photographs...

Trash fire

On my way from the pet food store to the bus stop, I noticed this trash can smoldering and giving off smoke in front of a "real women have real bodies" clothing store in the commercial district nearest to my home. I looked in and saw that someone had dumped a thick advertising flier on top of what is normally an outdoor ashtray, and a cigarette had set the paper on fire.

I went into the store and said to the first person I saw with an identification badge, "Excuse me, do you know that there's a fire in your trashcan?"

"Oh my god! There is?" The woman ran to the door, looked out, and said, "Oh my god!" again. She ran to the back, pulled out another woman to look at it, then said to me, "Do you know how to use a fire extinguisher? We're all women in here. We don't know how."

After recovering from that non-sequitor, I told her, "It's not a grease fire, it's a paper fire, it's very small and contained. Just pour a pitcher of cold water on it and put it out."

"Really?"

"Yes, really." I watched her run to the back. I went out to snap the photo, she came back out with one of those plastic pitchers you usually find filled with beer and she put the fire out. But, grief, "I'm a woman so I can't handle a fire extinguisher?" That's the stupidest thing I've heard yet, and I'm reading the political blogs!

Plug!

I saw this standing outside the Seattle Art Museum, and my first thought upon seeing it was, "Once upon a time, with enough lube I might have been able to take that!"