So in about 4 minutes (less by the time I post this, most likely), my local township will be spraying my local park for mosquitoes. My father got a phonecall a little under an hour ago informing him of this, and that we're apparently local enough to the park that we may get hit with some drifting of sprayed chemical, depending on the winds. Per the nice township phonecall, this poses "minimal" risk to people and pets.

I'm more than slightly peeved; IMO I ought to get a vote in what gets sprayed on my property (or at least my parents should, being the legal owners of said property - still, I am a tenant, I do live here, I am affected by toxic stuff sprayed in the vicinity). I know they are concerned about West Nile, but I do not want the rest of my insects killed off, and I have a population of dragonflies that controls my mosquitoes, and I have ethical and religious objections to the indiscriminate use of insecticide, and in general there is no aspect of this that does not make me want to go stand in front of the park with a pissed-off type sign. (I won't actually, mostly on account of an hour being too little time to come up with something really witty to write on said hypothetical sign). I don't recall any such program of insect control ever being put to a vote, at least a vote in which I was included or of which I was notified . . . I suppose that's what we have representatives for, but still, I feel disenfranchised and unamused about this.

I caved; a Pentax Optio S12 is winging its way to me via Amazon as we speak (well, actually, it's sitting in an Amazon warehouse because I opted for the free shipping, and ergo it won't ship out until September 2nd; but the process of its eventually reaching me has been set in motion! Just . . no actual motion type motion yet.) I tried and tried to find a store that had one in stock so that I could try it out before I bought it, but nobody within 25 miles seems to stock them - and sadly, gas prices being what they are, it's really not worth driving farther than that as opposed to just returning it if I don't like it. And Amazon had it on really, really ridiculous sale, so there you go.

I will post a review when it arrives and I've had a chance to try it out. I'm kinda bummed that it's not likely to arrive before the holiday, but oh well.

This was brought about in part by the optical zoom on the currently-owned Pentax Optio S7 dying an untimely death on me. I can't blame the camera - I've taken upwards of 15k pictures with it in the last 18 months. It's done its duty. But, never the less, I have a camera that shuts itself off if I try to use the zoom outside of macro mode (yeah, I know, I work almost exclusively in macro mode, but still) and is threatening to give up the ghost entirely. Even in macro mode, the focus is not what it used to be - sometimes it works, sometimes it gives me a big blur. And the summer's not over. This is decidedly not cool.

But I got this one before it started to go wonky on me. This is entitled, "No, Pixar did not make me up, I swear."