Once in a while, of recent years, I wish I couldn’t relate.

I suppose it’s similar the the kind of smugness you can encounter in lots of different fields, among people who’ve gotten past the basics, and perhaps started to develop some real skills, and think this entitles them to look down their noses at mere newbies (like they so recently were). I’ve encountered something like…

My wife and I once took yoga classes together. After the first two or three, we decided to find a different instructor. The first, we agreed, was ostentatious about her serenity.

And that, unlike his Biblical forerunner, he gets not a taste of honey in his diet.

Having watched, for some reason, Buchanan’s “culture war” speech at the 1992 Republican convention, I’d long written him off as just another paleoconservative windbag.

This is true (on the rare occasions I’ve grown a beard, it would, unlike my normal hair colour, come in reddish — or would in my youth, anyhow. Now it’s just white. Sick transit, glorious Monday, and all like that there). I was just being hasty and/or snarky in describing Branagh’s colour there as blue or blue-grey.

I’m getting a bit of a Three Musketeers/Cardinal Richelieu vibe too (granted that they’re usually played/portrayed with much thinner, neater ‘staches).

I should read more of the stories (I think I read one or two only, and that mumble-mumble years ago, as in >1 generation. Zoinks!) I need some relief from the madness of daily news.

I’ll take your word for it — the Finney version is one movie I never tire of, as much for the casting as anything else. What an incredible cast. Who could have predicted that one movie would star Anthony Perkins, Wendy Hiller, Lauren Bacall, John Gielgud, Vanessa Redgrave, Sean Connery...

David Suchet was great, but I liked Albert Finney, with his grouchiness, in the 1974 movie.

Haven’t watched the trailer yet — I’m guessing the train is CGI? Or maybe the winter storm?

Nor did he *colour* his moustache, which is the only way — considering the contrast with the hair colour — that absurdity could be explained. At least, not the first facial-hair blue-rinse on record. (Now that I think of it: Poirot mightn’t be above keeping the grey away with a little natural colour. Anyone who knows…

In the run-up to the war, some comic said something like “Hey George — even the Germans don’t want to go to war. Take the hint, willya?”

And now, of course, the Don is asking world leaders to call him on his personal cell.

Right, thank for the correction.

True; I suppose I should have said that low water temperatures correlate with lower numbers of ocean swimmers, certainly casual ones, than in some places. With the possible exception of something like Qualicum Beach, I can’t think of a BC equivalent to the beach scene you might get in New Jersey or points south, and…

Speaking of Okanagan lake monsters: whatever happened to the Ogo Pogo, anyway?

Sure, but can’t they do both? They are large; they contain multitudes. Or am I getting them mixed up with walruses?

Likely enough. Though those sea lions are a caution, too.

Sure, I absolutely don’t believe this phenomenon has anything to do with sharks or other predators. I’m all about the cheap laffs, is all. And this has been going on long enough that people had already staked out most of the obvious snark. This thread opened up new horizons.