You can paint with all the colors of the wind...I'll just watch.

This weekend Mother Axdahl and I made the three-hour trek all the way up to Grand Marais, MN for a couple days of R&R. This is why I have been incognito. I've posted some choice pictures from the expedition at the end of this post, including a photo of a rock monkey and an image of an incoming wave before completely drenching Your Humble Narrator.

I also saw something in a restaurant in Grand Marais that I hadn't seen for years. Does anybody else remember those money-eating charity robots that used to always crop up next to gas station and restaurant cash registers?

Now, I'm not referring to the mean, money-eating robots that rove the streets nowadays—the kind that run up to you when you least expect it and laser a hole in your wallet-pocket, devouring your supply of cash in a red-eye-glare'd frenzy. Nay, I am talking about the little yellow cans with eyes and a mouth that stand patiently next to a photo of a child with blind-cell-sickle-colon-halitosis-arexia. You first put the coinage in their little disc hand and push it down in what can best be compared to a high-five with your index finger. Suddenly, the machine comes to life, eyes bobbling around, and the coin is flung directly into its robo-gullet! It then makes a show of chewing thin air in order to make it seem more human to us, but we all know that robots actually swallow their food whole. Then, in the piece de resistance, it rolls its eyes back in its head and pants its tongue as if it had just gone through the most exhilarating, currency-driven climax a robot could ever have.

I really liked those things.

Photos from the North