Call me the man from Nantucket. I took third place in this year's Valentine's Day Limerick Contest. This year, your limerick had to reference medical pioneers, skin conditions, or microscopic life. So my limerick is about the little creature that lives in your eyelashes.

I don't mind losing to Eeksy-Peeksy, whose blog is a continual delight.

I had another submission that I thought was better, but probably got marked off because it was off-color, and maybe because the last line doesn't scan perfectly. You'll have to find it yourself.

If you're at all interested in the workings of the brain, biology, evolution, or conciousness, might I suggest getting a dog?

I mean, in addition to all the usual accolades of dog ownership, it's fascinating to have this other mind, this other kind of mind, living in your household.

The communication barrier is between us and her is bewildering to me. There's just no way to tell her some things. It kills me that when she arrived home here, she didn't even know she was staying. When we go for a walk, she doesn't know which way we're going to turn, at every intersection. When we go out without her, she doesn't know if it's for a minute or for eight hours.

I was surprised to see her start exhibiting behaviours appropriate to her breed. She won't fetch things, except at the beach -- where she'll swim out and fetch (other dog's) balls and sticks, then come back and drop them on the beach, just like a good retriever should. I never realized such a specific behaviour could be bred for, even if it's substituting balls for ducks. But why not? Beavers build dams on instinct alone, and spiders spin webs. I tend to think of such specific behaviours as learned, not ingrained. Evolution in action, even if the selection isn't "natural".

Which makes me wonder -- why have they never bred dogs strictly for intelligence? At least, not that I've ever heard of, or can find with a web search. Why concentrate on floppy ears, miniature size, long or short hair? I wonder just how smart you can make a dog. (Just out of curiousity. Laika, bless her heart, is in the fat of the bell curve, methinks, but we have no plans to trade her in.)

Recording history. I have a kind of fascination with things that are lost to history:

The loss of the Library at Alexandria -- almost inconceivable.

Two whole Shakespeare plays -- Love's Labour's Won and Cardenio -- didn't survive to the modern era.

Lennon and McCartney sat down, early on, and knocked out about fifty songs, which have vanished into the mists of time.

Countless early movies have been lost, or survive in only partial or edited form. (I for one would love to see the orignal ending to The Magnificent Ambersons.)

Many movies are in the process of being lost. There are people trying to prevent that.

Most of early television is gone. People just didn't think it would ever be considered important. Even recently, most of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson from the 1970's is nowhere to be found, I understand.

Those who don't learn from history, they say, are doomed to repeat it. So, I often wonder if there's anything happening these days that's being lost, because we don't realise that future generations might be interested.

Which brings me to an idea for a web site I'd like to implement, if I had more time. It would be appealing in the present mostly to music geeks. In fact, most would consider it frivolous at best.

What I would like to create is "gigography.com", a web site that archives concerts. It would list the band, venue, and date at a minimum, but also trivia, band line ups, set lists, opening bands, audio files, etc. Not just new concerts but shows dating back in history. You could easily browse back and check out the Woodstock lineup, or the Beatles set list on the Ed Sullivan show.

Until recently, this would be an impossible task for one person. But now with the concept of wikis, where anyone can add content, it's quite doable. You would be surprised how many fans have already compiled similar lists (cough) for their favorite artist. But so far, nothing has been centralized. It would be a simple matter to put the plea out there to various music lists to get the ball rolling.

Pointless? Maybe. Historically necessary? Well, doubtful. Fun? Surely.

Life goes on. We drank a toast to Mike at the Rufus Wainwright show last night. (Don't know if Mike was a fan, but it wouldn't surprise me.) An intimate venue, and a fantastic show. I don't think I've ever seen an audience held in such a trance. While the songs were intense, Rufus was jovial in between, joking a lot about being on a diet because his mother said he was fat recently. And because it was just him, he was free to rearrange his songs on the fly, and skip over or redo bits at will. An enormous talent. I never realized what a good piano player he is, too.

We both thought about Mike again during a song Rufus did about Jeff Buckley, who died tragically at a young age. Who frew da ham?

By an odd coincidence -- I watched an old M*A*S*H rerun earlier in the day. It was the one where the nurses all get sent off, and it featured a folk singer that played a sad song in the officer's club. In the closing credits it was revealed that the singer was Loudon Wainwright III, Rufus's father.