And your hamster

Harold's Rogue's Gallery: now we know

This is a strange one, but it's an indication of Harold Lloyd's continuing popularity and his fans' eagerness to collect his memorabilia.

The Rogue's Gallery, which is being auctioned off here, is a collection of photographs Harold had hanging in his (long, long, underground) hallway at his estate, Greenacres. Whenever anyone visited him, his wife Mildred requested or required that they bring a signed photograph of themselves. I often wondered during the researching/writing of The Glass Character what happened to those photos. With Harold living on such a gargantuan scale, there may well have been hundreds of them. I did come across another writer who asked the same thing: the photos had been publicly displayed once, I think in the 1960s, but what had happened to them after that?

Now we know.

This isn't the kind of event I am able to get to, for various reasons. I have no money, for one thing. It looks as if it's by invitation only. Certainly I couldn't afford a Rogue's Gallery photo, but I don't particularly want one. The best part, in fact the ONLY part of The Glass Character that had real meaning for me was writing it. After that, it fell into a hole. 

I'm still trying to recover. I'm lousy at making contacts - I tried over and over again and was rebuffed, so I don't seem to have "luck" or the magic formula. Kevin Brownlow was nice to me: I think he's wonderful and a real gentleman (not to mention the world's foremost expert on silent film!), but he was the only one who would give me the time of day. To this day, I can ask him any sort of question about the movies, and he will promptly answer me (and with great enthusiasm). The rest of them either did not respond at all, or showed only brief interest, then dropped it without explanation.

If this happens once or even twice, maybe it's just hard luck. Three times? You've misfired, done something very seriously wrong. And I'm still trying to figure out what that is.

Tonette

Just made the discovery - an old discovery, if there is such a thing - that I can access the Internet Archives for old ads. I've seen a lot of them on YouTube, of course, but there are always discoveries. With my "new" Imgur program, I can make gifs out of these videos, which is nice because I DO get weary of the limitations of YouTube.

I'm also thinking of other things. The other day I was thrilled to have retrieved part of a document I had deleted in a fit of - what, disgust? This was an over 1000-page "story" I'd been working on, on and off, for a year or so. I was writing it only for myself. This isn't the first time I've done something like that, written a lot of stories for myself, then gotten fed up and deleted them. Now I want them all back. But this time, by some miracle, I accessed a number of "rescued files", though only 800 or so pages was there.

Then my magnificent husband said, "I backed up all your stuff a few months ago. It might be there." Most of it was, to my amazement. But I hadn't looked at it in a very long time, and reading it over gave me the strangest feeling. Now I wonder whether I want to continue.

It's not edited, it's repetitive, etc. and I make no attempt to polish it or make it "good", but there are chunks of raw story that I DO think are good, as are some of the characters. For the first time, just this moment in fact, while slapping up my usual fusty old '50s ad gifs, I'm wondering about posting some of it. I don't even have a title for the damn thing! Chrysalis, which is the name of the organization in this thing, sounds too science-fictiony. Originally it was called Climbing the Wall.

My rule for it was "no work". Don't put pressure on myself:  just write. Don't be professional. Writing Harold gutted me, or at least the heartbreak of another failed novel gutted me, so I will never put myself through that again.

I don't want this to suddenly be "work", and I don't even know if I want to continue and try to make up the 100-or-so pages (?) that were truly lost.

But I wonder if this sudden thought is a way of getting myself writing again, meaning writing something that another set of human eyes might see.

I don't know.

Hey, little girl, comb your hair, fix your makeup

In May of 1955, Housekeeping Monthly published an article entitled, “The Good Wife’s Guide,” detailing all the ways that a wife should act and how best she can be a partner to her husband and a mother to her children.

It may feel a little strange to accept these rules today, but it remains so interesting to see how society once behaved.



Click Americana


1.) Have dinner ready. Plan ahead, even the night before, to have a delicious meal ready, on time for his return. This is a way of letting him know that you have been thinking about him and are concerned about his needs.

2.) Most men are hungry when they come home and the prospect of a good meal (especially his favorite dish) is part of the warm welcome needed.




Flickr/mid-century illustrated


3.) Prepare yourself. Take 15 minutes to rest so you’ll be refreshed when he arrives. Touch up your makeup, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh-looking. He has just been with a lot of work-weary people.

4.) Be a little gay and a little more interesting for him. His boring day may need a lift and one of your duties is to provide it.



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5.) Clear away the clutter. Make one last trip through the main part of the house just before your husband arrives. Gather up schoolbooks, toys, paper, etc. and then run a dust cloth over the tables.



And the Words became Books


6.) Over the cooler months of the year you should prepare and light a fire for him to unwind by. Your husband will feel he has reached a haven of rest and order, and it will give you a lift too. After all, catering for his comfort will provide you with immense personal satisfaction.



Etsy/printsandpastimes


7.) Prepare the children. Take a few minutes to wash the children’s hands and faces (if they are small), comb their hair and, if necessary, change their clothes.

8.) Children are little treasures and he would like to see them playing the part. Minimize all noise. At the time of his arrival, eliminate all noise of the washer, dryer or vacuum. Try to encourage the children to be quiet.


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9.) Be happy to see him. Free him with a warm smile and show sincerity in your desire to please him. Listen to him.

10.) You may have a dozen important things to tell him, but the moment of his arrival is not the time. Let him talk first — remember, his topics of conversation are more important than yours.



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11.) Make the evening his. Never complain if he comes home late or goes out to dinner, or other places of entertainment without you. Instead, try to understand his world of strain and pressure and his very real need to be at home and relax.



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12.) Your goal: Try to make sure your home is a place of peace, order and tranquility where you husband can renew himself in body and spirit.

13.) Don’t greet him with complaints and problems.



Flickr/Isabel Santos Pilot


14.) Don’t complain if he’s late home for dinner or even if he stays out all night. Count this as minor compared to what he might have gone through that day.



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15.) Make him comfortable. Have him lean back in a comfortable chair or have him lie down in the bedroom. Have a cool or warm drink ready for him.

16.) Arrange his pillow and offer to take off his shoes. Speak in a low, soothing and pleasant voice.



The Glamorous Housewife


17.) Don’t ask him questions about his actions or question his judgment of integrity. Remember, he is the master of the house and as such will always exercise his will with fairness and truthfulness. You have no right to question him.

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18. A GOOD WIFE ALWAYS KNOWS HER PLACE.

This piece was borrowed from THIS site, though it is all over the internet by now.

http://www.littlethings.com/1950s-good-housewife-guide/?utm_medium=Facebook

OK, readers. . . in case you think this gem is a hoax/parody, dig this. It looks like it's real, because it'd be hard to fake a newspaper clipping like this one.

Time to get ready for. . . indentured servitude.

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

Does failure pay the rent?

Not sure if it is the sludge of summer, the end-ish flavour of things, the Trump crap which really depresses me and even makes me anxious and depressed, or what. But I am fed up about certain things, and one of them is the Disguised Ad.

I'm seeing it all over Facebook now, maybe because it's the slow season. An author will post an article about, say, Trump's latest insane comment, and include a remark something like, "As I wrote in my fourth novel, Ten Tigers Ascending, the proletariat often blindly heed the inchoate prognostications of a demigogue to incite the fomentation of narcissistic monocracy." What he means is, "my novel says that too, only better". 

This particular novel didn't say any such gobbledygook, but this particular author MUST keep dropping in little references to his work to keep it alive in the minds of his readers. It's like product placement in the movies.  And what about "I was so deeply humbled to receive the Man Booker Award"? Humbled. I don't know about that. I would not blame the person for turning cartwheels of joy, but why not admit it?

My own novels fell flat, to say the least, and did not do well financially, though I still have no regrets in writing them. Generally speaking, they were well-reviewed. But those good and sometimes great reviews are just a pain to me now, because my novels never went anywhere. As always, the brass ring was snatched away from me just as I brushed it with the tips of my fingers.

I cannot tell you how long this has been going on.

My hope is that people will take my books out of the library and read them. I honestly don't care two figs about sales, but it would be nice if someone read them. I have no way of keeping track of this, so I have to go on faith. I am so sick of this having to hustle, to pitch, to drop in these little references so that my work will always be on my (potential, perhaps chimeric) readers' minds. 

Social media is bad, but internet culture generally is bad for making you feel BAD, badder than bad, unless you have "numbers": views, followers, hits of some kind. I never have, except for the occasional, baffling, much-read post. But most of them have only a handful of readers. Am I supposed to feel bad about that? I'm not going to stop doing it, at least not yet, because as of this writing I still feel like doing it. And that's why I continue. 

But at this point, on this day, at this moment, I feel fed-up and realize I won't ever have any appreciable level of "success" in the eyes of the world. I too have to hold up billboards for my work, but I try to keep it to this blog (with the same title as the third novel - did you notice?) and the separate Facebook page I set up for it. I've done what I wanted to and given it more than my all, and according to all those trite memes, this guarantees ultimate, shining success. Even if it doesn't, failure is just a "learning experience".

This strikes me as compassionate lying, so we/others don't feel so bad about screwing up or doing badly. Falling short. But the truth is, no matter how great the learning experience, there is no way that failure can pay the rent.

A hole in the sky

A fallstreak hole, also known as a hole punch cloud, punch hole cloud, skypunch, canal cloud or cloud hole, is a large circular or elliptical gap that can appear in cirrocumulus oraltocumulus clouds. Such holes are formed when the water temperature in the clouds is below freezing but the water has not frozen yet due to the lack of ice nucleation (see supercooled water). When ice crystals do form it will set off a domino effect, due to the Bergeron process, causing the water droplets around the crystals to evaporate: this leaves a large, often circular, hole in the cloud. (Wikipedia)

BLOGGER'S NOTE. It's a lie, you know. What they tell you in Wikipedia. I only included this bit of scientific babble for the one out of four of you (I mean the four who actually read this) who might be interested in HOW a big hole might form in the clouds, sometimes with a rainbow showing through.

They're weird, but no weirder than a lot of sky-effects like lenticular clouds (not shown here) that look exactly like flying saucers. Even these sky-holes set off storms of comments from YouTubers claiming they're chemtrails from jets (and actually, jetstreams sometimes play a part in the formation of these, but I won't get into that). Either that, or the Illuminati, because the Illuminati and the Freemasons are behind absolutely everything, including Isis (founded by Barack Obama!) and the Presidential bid by Donald Trump.

Don't believe any of it, it's Friday, nice out, and I'm going outside.

P. S. These gif slide-shows are relatively easy to make, but you have to get all your photos in the same ratio. They don't have to be the same size in pixels. If they aren't in the same ratio - these are 4 x 6 - you'll have white margins at the edges on some of them. Just sayin'. A display like this takes time to set up, but it has some advantages over just slapping up photos. Though I'm still trying to figure out what they are.

P. S. S. T.: These aren't made by all the meteorological forces listed in Wikipedia. God gets mad about what's going on in the world today, and stamps his foot. Sometimes I feel like doing the same thing.

The greatest President God ever created

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Theodore Roosevelt

Now the trumpet summons us again–not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need–not as a call to battle, though embattled we are–but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, “rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation”–a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself. Can we forge against these enemies a grand and global alliance, North and South, East and West, that can assure a more fruitful life for all mankind? Will you join in that historic effort? In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility–I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it–and the glow from that fire can truly light the world. And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you–ask what you can do for your country.

John F. Kennedy

If you want more justice in the justice system, then we’ve all got to vote -- not just for a president, but for mayors, and sheriffs, and state’s attorneys, and state legislators. That's where the criminal law is made. And we’ve got to work with police and protesters until laws and practices are changed. That's how democracy works. If you want to fight climate change, we’ve got to engage not only young people on college campuses, we've got to reach out to the coal miner who’s worried about taking care of his family, the single mom worried about gas prices. If you want to protect our kids and our cops from gun violence, we’ve got to get the vast majority of Americans, including gun owners, who agree on things like background checks to be just as vocal and just as determined as the gun lobby that blocks change through every funeral that we hold. That is how change happens.

Barack Obama

Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist
and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes,
OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart
—you know, if you're a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if,
like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the
smartest people anywhere in the world—it's true!—but when you're a
conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number—that's
why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went
there, went there, did this, built a fortune—you know I have to give my
like credentials all the time, because we're a little disadvantaged—but
you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me—it would
have been so easy, and it's not as important as these lives are (nuclear
is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the
power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of
what's going to happen and he was right—who would have thought?),
but when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners—now it
used to be three, now it's four—but when it was three and even now, I
would have said it's all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because,
you know, they don't, they haven't figured that the women are smarter
right now than the men, so, you know, it's gonna take them about
another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians
are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.

When I said that Obama, and of course, I’m being sarcastic. They know that, because after I said that, I said he’s the MVP, he is going to collect his MVP award. So I said Obama is the founder of ISIS, the founder, and these dishonest media people they say did he mean that, and after that, I’d say a lot, in fact, they like him so much because he’s been so weak and so bad. I mean, he let this happen. They had eight states. They had eight countries. They’re now in twenty-eight countries. They’re expanding. So I said the founder of ISIS. Obviously, I was being sarcastic, then, then but not that sarcastic to be honest with you.

That’s one of the nice things. I mean, part of the beauty of me is that I’m very rich. So if I need $600 million, I can put $600 million myself. That’s a huge advantage. I must tell you, that’s a huge advantage over the other candidates.

I dealt with Gaddafi. I rented him a piece of land. He paid me more for one night than the land was worth for two years, and then I didn’t let him use the land. That’s what we should be doing. I don’t want to use the word ‘screwed’, but I screwed him. That’s what we should be doing.

Washington (CNN)

Donald Trump said Thursday that he meant exactly what he said when he called President Barack Obama the "founder of ISIS" and objected when a conservative radio show host tried to clarify the GOP nominee's position.

Trump was asked by host Hugh Hewitt about the comments Trump made Wednesday night in Florida, and Hewitt said he understood Trump to mean "that he (Obama) created the vacuum, he lost the peace."

Trump objected.

"No, I meant he's the founder of ISIS," Trump said. "I do. He was the most valuable player. I give him the most valuable player award. I give her, too, by the way, Hillary Clinton."


Hewitt pushed back again, saying that Obama is "not sympathetic" to ISIS and "hates" and is "trying to kill them."

"I don't care," Trump said, according to a show transcript. "He was the founder. His, the way he got out of Iraq was that that was the founding of ISIS, okay?"

Hewitt and Trump went back and forth after that, with Hewitt warning Trump that his critics would seize on his use of "founder" as more example of Trump being loose with words.

Clinton later hit back on Thursday on Twitter, saying it was Trump who was unfit to be president.

"It can be difficult to muster outrage as frequently as Donald Trump should cause it, but his smear against President Obama requires it," Clinton tweeted. "No, Barack Obama is not the founder of ISIS. ... Anyone willing to sink so low, so often should never be allowed to serve as our Commander-in-Chief."

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

Double Rainbow, All The Way

Seen this before, but just remembered it again because the B. C. Lottery Corporation has revived their (rather lame) ad based on it. Can't find the ad anywhere! - even though it's been on before, like, in 2013 or something, and they brought it back for some reason, too cheap to make a new one. But I hadn't heard the song, which is quite funny.

It's great to be alive!