Massive alligator takes casual stroll through South Carolina golf course

Something for a Monday.

Stayin' alive. . . stayin' alive. . .

Here's what you have to do to "stay alive" in North Korea.

🎃MANGA-BANGA POP-EYED PUMPKIN!🎃

It's Halloween. The lamp is lit.

Around the fire we children sit

And telling ghost-tales bit by bit,

'Til sister Jane says "HUSH!"

Who's that creeping on the kitchen floor?

Who's that sneaking round the bedroom door?

Who's that squeaking like his throat is sore?

IT'S A GOBLIN!!

Why I remember this tattered bit of song from my school days - maybe grade 3 or 4 (and I took 3 and 4 in one year, which was then called "skipping" but which meant the curriculum was combined so that I could go into a "special" Grade 5) is a mystery to me, but it's one of those things that flies out of the junkyard of all my past lives and hits me on the head like flying shrapnel.

I say grade 3 or 4, rather than 5 or 6, because I seem to remember, vaguely, the music teacher from McKeough School in Chatham vigorously leading the choir, which was made up of "canaries" and "bluebirds", or something like that (i. e, the kids who couldn't sing were literally in their own little stigmatized group, not allowed to mix with the better singers). McKeough School was an old horror of a building which was turned into a heritage site in the '80s, but which may well have been converted into retail space by now - like that OTHER horror, Park Street Untied Church (about which I still get an inquiry once in a while when somebody takes a bit of interest in Rev. Russell Horsburgh, whom I have written about in several posts, years and years ago. I don't recommend you read them.)

I can't and won't go into other Hallowe'en memories (and we DID spell it with the apostrophe, a contraction of "evening" - I guess - and when I saw it spelled in that archaic way recently, I was puzzled. Do they still do that in Britain? Do they even HAVE Hallowe'en in the UK?), because I don't have too many. One time, though - my mother actually sewed my outfit, a black velvet cat costume which caused one guy in a car to yell out, "What's new, pussycat?" to a startled eight-year-old, trick-or-treating me.

I have to get on with my day now. I made this goofy little video out of PicMix gifs, and post it here cuz I want my videos to have a second life somewhere. It surprises me how many views I get on YouTube for these little things, primitive as they are. But there is pushback now because, among other things, YT has become (as they used to say in the '60s) "plastic" - too slick, too manufactured, too uniform, too DULL like a loud TV commercial, all monetized and out to grab your cash. And why is it that so many YTers KEEP ON SAYING, "Like, subscribe, hit the notification bell. . ." at the end of every single video, when everyone who has ever watched even ONE YT video knows all about that stuff? Just as actors shouldn't insult their audience and authors should not insult their readers, YT should not be insulting people who have actually SEEN the little symbols for like, subscribe, and notification at the bottom of EACH AND EVERY video.

But I digress.

💥"Guten tag, Pokey!" GUMBY SPEAKS GERMAN!💥

This is just so weird that I HAD to post it. Yes, there really was a German dub of the Gumby Movie (which I THINK was called The Gumby Movie) that flopped so badly in the '90s that it went direct to video. If you look closely at this, the animation is pretty terrible, nothing like the bizarre but somehow believable work of Gumby creator Art Clokey. There are continuity problems, problems with synchronizing sound and dialog, and even remnants of props showing which are used to keep the clay figure in place while each frame is photographed individually ("claymation", which is also known as stop motion animation). The thing I notice the most is that the characters' HAIR moves all over the place, a weird side effect of bad animation which makes the whole thing look amateurish. As for the plot of this thing. . . never mind, but hearing Gumby and his pals speak German makes this excerpt worth watching for its sheer bizarre-itude.

😾😲KITTEN WITH SUPERPOWERS: Don't Mess With PUFF!😲😾

One of my more primitive, but still favorite, animations, originally made for this blog - I think?? Or maybe Facebook. But here it is in a more fully-realized form. It amazes me that I get views for these, but people seem to like the fact it's handmade, deliberately primitive, and the farthest thing from CGI possible.

BLANK SCREEN: a beautiful sight!

💗Whatever this is, I love it!💗

I have no idea what this is or where it came from. Must be YouTube.

😳JENNIFER GREY in EMBARRASSING '80s Computer Dating Video!😳

I will admit to stealing this video from a magnificent YouTube channel called Pics and Portraits. Why it's called that, I do not know, because a soporific-sounding announcer keeps coming on and saying things like, "You're watching Sleepcore. Pleasant dreams."  So was the channel originally called Sleepcore? Did someone else steal the name, or - . Or did it get shut down, the way I have also been nearly shut down for no particular reason except benevolent plagiarism? 

But the art of stealing reached the level of the sublime when I saw a comment under one of the Sleepcore videos. A guy was complaining about some aspect of the content, I think the format of it, because it made it harder for HIM to upload everything onto HIS channel. In other words, he was openly admitting to stealing ALL of this guy's content, whole and unedited. The Sleepcore guy just told him he had nothing to complain about, which was true.

As if that were not weird enough. . . the YouTuber behind Pics and Portraits admits to using "repurposed" material. A nice way of saying "stolen". Which means I am either not really stealing it,  or stealing pre-stolen material. Kind of like "distressed" jeans, which I would never want to wear because, let's face it, most days, I am distressed enough already.

This little gem is just one of a genre called "retrofuturistic computer horror stories", in which we're all told we will soon be swamped in a sea of ignorance about computers unless we scramble to find out EVERYTHING about them. Long strings of incomprehensible techno-babble soon follow, just to make sure we feel properly terrified and thrown off-balance. This stuff must have been produced by sadists. Suffice it to say that none of it ever came true.

I know nothing about computers after all these years, and still use them fairly competently, at least to the point of maintaining a blog and a YouTube channel. So that was a bunch of bunk. Some of these retro-mini-dramas tried to put a more positive spin on the oncoming horror. Jennifer Grey is excruciatingly cute in this little snippet, which extols the virtue of a magical system which allows a teenaged couple to draw pictures together without actually being in the same room. Both are supposed to be nerdy, unpopular kids who can't meet anyone in the usual way (whatever THAT is), but the whole thing just fizzles because Jennifer Grey is charismatic and sweet, and the guy is - well, he's  a doll, and I wouldn't have minded at all having him for a boy friend in 1972. But this was long before the prototype of the nerd as pop culture hero. 

I think the real truth of all this, besides the fact that both of them are well into their 20s, is that Jennifer Grey needed the work (this was a couple of years before Dirty Dancing), and the really cute guy was the only one who auditioned. 

😳WHAT DOES IT MEAN??😲

This is a really, truly, scary thing that happened to me a couple of years ago when I was on a Facebook page. I don't even know how or why it popped up. So what do they mean by "kill" the page? How do you do that, and why would anyone want to? I thought the term was "delete". I still haven't figured it out, but it made a cool animation which started life as a gif, but is now posted on YouTube.

💔OFFICE ROMANCE: when it all goes wrong (animation)💔

"When you just give love

And never get love,

You'd better let love 

Depaaaaaart. . . "

HIERONYMUS BOB (Bob Dylan animation)!

Time for yet another Bob Dylan animation! Made by me. Cuz I loves that Bob.