And I would walk 500 miles

It took me a while to track this down. There's a story behind it. I first heard the song at the end of a movie called Benny and Joon. Though I had mixed feelings about the movie (in spite of Johnny Depp's shabby cuteness as a sort of faux silent movie mime), the song grabbed me, as how could it not? It's that kind of song.

But I didn't hear it much at all until a couple weeks ago, when I was at a dance recital. Well, all right, my granddaughter's dance recital. And this was the music to one of the dances, and for some reason, slam. Right in the gut. I just cried and blubbered through the whole thing.

I'm not sure what it is. I originally thought the singer was a woman. I know almost nothing about this group. I don't know if I want to compare this version with the original, or not.

Oh, all right.

Horse poop animation!

One of my stranger animations, especially the horse pooping chocolate hearts.

Beyond belief: did this 1958 TV show predict Donald Trump?

I posted an excerpt from this the other day. It is just too weird! I wondered if the entire episode might be on YouTube, and here it is. I initially thought: it's a hoax, it's redubbed. Or maybe it's just edited to look coincidental. But in watching the whole thing, the coincidences are downright weird.

It's about a man called Trump who comes to town predicting an attack on the townsfolk by a terrifying outside force. Only HE has the answer to protect them from this deadly threat: build a wall! The wall, quite predictably, comes at a price.

It all falls apart in the end, of course, but not before 99% of the townsfolk fall into line with his scheme. He is so convincing that normally law-abiding citizens are driven to break into the bank to finance his "wall".

What scared me most about this isn't the Trump character and his eerie similarity to you-know-who. It's the automatic knee-jerk reaction in the town, the rapid contagion of this stupid, senseless belief, and people's willingness and even need to unquestioningly fall into line and "obey".

They're sheep, as are most people. We're herd animals, or perhaps even flock animals, bird-brained. The con man's "wall", by the way, is so ridiculous that it's literally paper-thin. But until that moment of inevitable disillusionment, almost nobody doubts its power to save their world.