Retroactive patience

On Wednesday after we saw Scott Pilgrim vs. the World downtown, Denys and I got stuck in a terrible traffic jam on Aurora. We remembered too late that they had started work on the anti-suicide fence on the bridge and that traffic across the bridge was narrowed to one lane in both directions. I was pissed off that there hadn't been any signs warning us at the on-ramp, when we could have diverted to Dexter. We crept along at a rate slower than walking. It took us a half hour to finally get to the bridge, where we were surprised to discover that no traffic was being allowed across whatsoever. We were diverted to Dexter. I was really pissed that the cops were waiting to divert people at the bridge rather than diverting us much earlier.

Well, today I found out why in the Fremont Universe blog: There was a jumper on the bridge that night. The cops were eventually able to talk her down. (The blog article is actually about the fact that somebody live-tweeted the story, and asks whether this was a good thing to do.)

So in retrospect I am no longer pissed at the cops. They were responding to a crisis, and their plans probably unfolded haphazardly as they dealt with it. One of the bizarre things that happened on top of all this is that a Medic One vehicle had to make it's way through the traffic jam to get to one of the retirement centers along Aurora. I hope they were able to save whoever that call was for, too.

Shagging rats

Okay, I've often wondered about the name Shagrat in Lord of the Rings. Now I've seen it argued that the name Halfast is in fact Tolkien's donnish pun on half-assed, but I have a hard time believing he meant to imply "rat-fucker" by Shagrat. Is there another meaning of "shag" that he was playing on? In the US there's the usage in the phrase "shagging flies," which means catching fly balls in baseball batting practice. I see that "shag" means "to chase after" in that sense. Is that the sense Tolkien was using here? Rat-chaser?

Image of the Day

The Locket (1946)

"Why was I always throwing away the very things I wanted?"