The Ubersquirrel

Then act like one!

Watching the rescues!

Oh deer

 

Reporter turns ghetto in 3 seconds

This video vies with the leprechaun sighting in Alabama (below) as one of my all-time-favorite YouTubes. This is a real guy - a real reporter, not some guy pretending to be a reporter, which is what makes it so freakin' funny. I just laugh myself teary-eyed every time I see it, which is usually really late at night so I have to be quiet. Apparently, the TV station never aired the clip! Amazing, isn't it? But someone pirated it, put it on YouTube (back in 2008, when YouTube had about seven videos on it) and it quickly spread like a communicable disease.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isiah_Carey

Twenty seconds of Superman

Unlike 90% of the gifs that appear on this blog, I didn't make this one. It's a "share" (so it's OK, I'm not ransacking anyone's gif files). It's the longest gif I've ever seen, maybe because it's a stop-motion type thing, but the effect is still there.

Actually, no. I just timed it at 20 seconds, and I used to be able to make 30-second ones (easily!) when Gifsforum was still in operation. Later on, before it completely malfunctioned, Makeagif would make at least a 20-second one. I can still do longer ones on Imgur, but they're far too big to post. All my attempts to shrink them down make them look like crap.

So it's nice to get an unusually-long one like this. The animation works just fine with only a few frames per second. Damn sight better than mine, anyways. And whatever DID happen to Gifsforum?? If I google it, it tells me it's still in operation, but believe me when I say, there is NOTHING there.

Running out of time? God will give you more

I recently found a trove of  "As Seen on TV" videos on YouTube, the kind you will never see on TV (or, at least, I haven't). There's even a Facebook page with a daily video. Oh joy! Some of these are just weird enough to appeal to me. I didn't think anyone was religious enough to want a talking clock that spews scriptural verses at you, but then again -. Here it is.

Bentley is behind my computer screen

Bentley does NOT like the vacuum cleaner. He likes the carpet cleaner even less. It's rare to see him hide anywhere - he's usually not a fraidy-cat. But here he averages it out: halfway hiding, just peeking over the edge. I wish the light were better here. He doesn't stay long behind it, anyway.

Entrance of the Catholic Idiots

This thing is absolutely inexplicable. It's some sort of cheesy Italian Catholic circus-thingammy, with out-of-tune music that cuts in and out, and so-called acrobats who look like they've been scraped off the streets of Rome. If this IS Rome, which it's not, I'm sure (in fact, I think it's somewhere in Brazil). I don't know what Novena Solena is, but I've found a few more of these videos which are along the same lines. There is one involving acrobatic angels with fur wings and crimplene gowns, and another one featuring little kids carting around bowls with live goldfish in them.

Exceptionally cheesy. All the comments (with a sample below) are indignant and blame Vatican II, whatever THAT is. You know that expression "so bad it's good'? This is so bad, it's bad.

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Fruit of Vatican II....people ignoring Fatima this is what we get. God have mercy on mankind!

Que grosería

Totally inappropriate and scandalous to say the least. All organizers and "priest" to be excommunicated asap .

This is total carnival of heresy.

Unreal. I really hope this was not a Roman Catholic Church or Roman Catholics doing this.

 Just Evil.

Anh?

I want to freaking puke!! Why was I born post vat 2??? I can see why the orthodox do not want to unite with us!

yep, this makes me want to go bacK u__u

This is sick.

How horrible.

They were thinking Vatican ll with the liberal modernist evils.

Sinful and shameful. THIS IS VATICAN ll. Forgive them Father they know not what they do.

CAN NOT BELIEVED THIS IS TRUE, MAY BE A GRAPHIC DESIGN TRICK OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT.

Is this supposed to be Catholic or something? It looked and felt 100% pagan.

CHE SCHIFO, VERGOGNATEVI

El espanto.....

Why?? God, why??

Que coisa mais ridícula, abominável! Aonde vamos parar? Isso é missa ou é circo? 

Aparecida clowns!

What r u doing? Brazil Stahp!

This one will have even non-traditionalist Catholics face-palming? What were they thinking?

Conjunction Junction, what's your function?

I have to tell you this.

I remember these things from, oh, probably my late teens (when, by the way, I was already married). But they did not die. They went on and on.

Not only did my kids watch Schoolhouse Rock videos (they were called cartoons then) in the early '80s, my GRANDKIDS were fairly recently subjected to them in school. I couldn't believe it - budget restraints, or what?

They couldn't believe it when I began to sing along with them, "Conjunction Junction, what's your function?" and "Anyplace that you can go, and anything that you can know/You know they're nouns/You know they're nouns". (For some reason I keep thinking of the Statue of Liberty part.)

These aren't particularly good, but they're nostalgic, and this one is nicely restored by somebody-or-other. It comes from one of those ubiquitous Facebook nostalgia pages that I increasingly spend my time on, wanting to distract myself from the impending Armageddon which will surely come if that evil prick in the White House isn't impeached within a year.

"I took a ferry to the Statue of Liberty. . . "

Triumph of the Will: as seen by Busby Berkeley

Come out, come out, come out and get your lovin'
Now don't you keep me in suspense
Come on, come on, we'll do our turtledovin'
Sittin' on a backyard fence

Come on, come on,
The little stars are peekin'
They're waiting for you to commence
Uh-huh, uh-huh, I kind of thought I'd weaken
Sittin' on a backyard fence

It may be just another little backyard alley
Off the avenue
But I can see a willow tree, a moonlit valley
In the dreams I share with you

Meow, meow, the kitty cat is cooin'
He shows a lot of common sense
He knows, he knows, there's always something doin'
Sittin' on a backyard fence!

This is only one of my favorite numbers from Footlight Parade, a classic Busby Berkeley musical from 1933. Pre-code, obviously, though this number is extremely mild compared to the hilariously charming Honeymoon Hotel, in which almost every line is full of double-entendres. But the tune is so lighthearted and the players so delightfully comedic that they get away with it. I can't find a whole version of HH, so can't post it here, and lyrics alone don't begin to get it. This little cat number, much simpler than the other three Berkeley blockbusters in this film, is a sort of warmup for the orgasmic bliss of the movie's last half-hour. And believe me, it IS orgasmic, even though I've had a few revelations about Berkeley lately that have opened my eyes.

I've seen his choreography, of course - anyone who likes old movies has, and my impression of it was always "classy kitsch". But then I couldn't help but notice the grace and precision of his dancers as they played phony violins or pianos in exact unison, or performed water ballet so perfectly synchronized it was a little bit frightening.

It IS a little bit frightening to see all this intentional, mass uniformity, and it fascinated me to find out a bit about Berkeley's background. He wasn't a dancer or a choreographer at all, wasn't even in show business. He was a drill sergeant in the army during World War I, an expert at forming precise military patterns with human bodies. This was some sort of mad genius drill sergeant, of course, and some of his visions are much darker than I realized.

I've just sent away to Amazon for a boxed set with some of his best-known stuff in it, but the one I'm looking forward to the most is Gold Diggers of 1935. His version of Lullaby of Broadway is so spooky that it's hard to see it as part of a musical at all. It's almost like a horror movie, with the singer's face starting as a tiny white dot in the middle of total blackness. Then like some toxic death-lily it gradually blooms and blooms until it dominates the screen in a way that is nothing short of macabre.

The dancing in this number is not like normal dancing, believe me. This isn't tap. I don't know what it is, but it includes aggressive arm-thrusting movements that at first look weird, then violent, then - like something out of the Third Reich. I am not exaggerating.

Hitler was well on his way by 1935, as was Leni Riefenstahl, chronichler of Hitler's rise in the infamous propoganda film, Triumph of the Will. But I was astonished to learn that, fascist as his choreography looked, it was not Berkeley who was influenced by Riefenstahl.

It was the other way around. Riefenstahl idolized American film, and American musicals in particular. She could not have failed to be dazzled by a choreographer who could get a couple hundred identical human beings to move around a stage in exact unison.

Berkeley didn't have a happy life. He married and divorced six times, killed three people in a drunken car accident, and at least once tried to commit suicide. For all that, he lived to be 80 years old. Such longevity is not always a great blessing in a person like that.

But he left these weird artifacts with their disturbing overtones. This little backyard fence number is nothing - except for a dwarf running around in a bizarre rat costume, and the inexplicably weird "thing" that Ruby Keeler rises out of and  dances around, a leering, winking, open-mouthed something that might be the moon, or something else.

KILL THEM!

I wanted to make an animation with that horrible little symbol on the "kill them!" notice that I keep getting. Though I've had it explained to me over and over, I still do not understand what "kill them" means. Do they mean "delete"? Why not SAY "delete"? If a page is unresponsive, WHY delete it in the first place? So I assumed "kill them" meant to nuke them absolutely, to wipe them off the face of the earth as if they had never existed. I could see a miniature mushroom cloud rising from my Facebook page and my blog (nurtured along for SEVEN years now!). I would be left with nothing but blankness, a terrible void. And I didn't even DO anything.

Well, what else COULD "kill them" mean? It had to mean wiping them out completely, or they would not call it that. And why, when the page's only crime was being "unresponsive"? I've gone on various sites that supposedly explained the "kill them" notice, and all they do is repeat, "if it's unresponsive, kill the page". There is software that keeps the notice from coming up that you can buy. But if you hit the wrong button - 

What happens??

As with almost everything else to do with computers, you're supposed to already know.They talk over your head in glib jargon that makes you feel like a pile of ignorant shit in seconds.

I am still convinced that if you hit the wrong button, you are screwed. You will no longer have any trace of existence on Facebook, your blog or anywhere else. You will have "killed" the page or pages. 

OK then, if it isn't that, explain it to me! In English! Don't just say, "well then, kill the file", expecting me to KNOW what it means, and whether or not I can bring it back from the dead!
But dead means dead. Doesn't it?

My animation is the usual jumping-up-and-down-on-each-other thing, but it's hard to do anything else with such a hideous malformation. When I first saw this notice, I literally gasped. It was EVIL and seemed to come out of nowhere. No one else I knew had ever even heard of it. The little symbol on it scared the living hell out of me. It was a whole new definition of ugly, and menacing.

Why would would I WANT to kill my pages? Why? And if I do, can they ever be resurrected?

I don't see what else this command could mean but total and permanent annihilation. You can't just kill something or someone for a little while. Killing is forever.

Bentley's abandonment issues

Bentley is the opposite, When we're going out, he dives into his carrier and looks out at us beseechingly, as if to say, "Take me with you!" All right, not beseechingly. He just looks out at us.

Scientology: living the nightmare

Bentley hates the vacuum cleaner!

Warning: this will scare the shit out of you

This is a sound you know, but you don't know that you know it. After this, you will wish you had never heard it at all.

Bentley and bird tracks

Bentley has enough trouble figuring out snow. But what are these teeny-weeny tracks? Perhaps we have been visited by small dinosaurs.

Bentley has a very nice closeup in this one. He specializes in the sombre, liquid-eyed, enigmatic closeup.

Two pussies in love

My latest animation. Disney it ain't - I don't know how to do 24 frames per second. This is more like stop-motion. But it took me long enough!

Mission Impossible Squirrel

Cats I have known

Oh gee! Oh joy! He's Cupid's toy

One big yawn

The Office: a drama in 14 frames

Baby koala: cutest video I've ever seen!

Dick, Jane and Puff: killer kitten

One of my more sadistic animations. As usual, people jump and down on each other a lot. Bambi it ain't, but it was still hard for me to do. Took forever.

Pettin' in the dark: pre-Code Hollywood

Gorgeous, in a pre-Code sort of way. The "little boy" is really a dwarf named Billy Barty.

Girls just wanna . . .

A partial list of recent books with "girl" in the title

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
Twenties Girl by Sophie Kinsella
The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson
The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale

The Girl You Left Behind by Jojo Moyes
Don’t Judge A Girl by Her Cover by Ally Carter
The House Girl by Tara Conklin
The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey
This Girl by Colleen Hoover
The Windup Girl by Paulo Bacigalupi
The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen
The Girls by Emma Cline 

Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler 

Local Girls by Caroline Zancan 

The Second Girl by David Swinson 

All the Missing Girls by Megan Miranda

The Girl In the Ice by Robert Bryndza 

Girl In the Afternoon by Serena Burdick 

The Girls In the Garden by Lisa Jewell 

The Girl Before by Rena Olsen 

Little Girl Gone by Gerry Schmitt 

Sarong Party Girls by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan 

Radio Girls by Sarah-Jane Stratford 

The Lost Girls by Heather Young 

Girl In the Blue Coat by Monica Hesse 

The Girl In the Red Coat by Kate Hamer 

If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo 

Nowhere Girl by Susan Strecke 

The Girl From the Savoy by Hazel Gaynor 

Beware That Girl by Teresa Toten 

The Crow Girl by Erik Axl Sund 

Girl In the Shadows by Gwenda Bond 

Girl Against the Universe by Paula Stokes

Girl About Town by Adam Shankman and Laura L. Sullivan
Girl In Pieces by Kathleen Glasgow 

Girl on a Plane by Miriam Moss 

The German Girl by Armando Lucas Correa 

Girls on Fire by Robin Wasserman

Girl in the Dark by Marian Pauw

MY list of books with "girl" in the title"

Girl on a Spit

Girl on a Stick

Girls! Girls! Girls!

Girls Galore

Girls in Titles
More Girls in Titles
MORE Girls in Titles
Girls in Titles Trilogy: Part Six
Title Girls

Cash-Grab Girls

Movie Adaptation Girls
Film Option Girls

Girl in the Purple Coat

Girl in the Pink Coat

Girl in the Maroon Coat

Girl in the Tartan Mackintosh

Girl in the Black Rubber Wellies

The Goose Girl

The Cow Girl

The Gorilla Girl

The Various-Species-Because-It's-So-Popular Girl

Concubine Girl
Kinkubine Girl

Slutty but Somehow Still Classy Girl
Sexual-Favors-Performing But Only To Save Her Life Girl

Girl Whose Sexual Escapades All Work Out In The End Because She Gets Married And Rich

Bondage Girl

Bandage Girl

Nurse Girl
Cursed Girl

Literary Girl

Library Girl

Galloway Girl

Ghomeshi Girl

Tie-Me-Up-And-Hit-Me-Because-I-Like-It Girl 

What's The Name of That Teddy Bear? Girl
Road Kill Girl

Never Mind Why We Need It In The Title, It Sells Books So Just Shut Up And Buy It Girl

Call Girl (Anything You Want)

The Fortune Cookie Girl

The Fortunate Cookie Girl
The Unfortunate Cookie Girl

The Girl Guide Cookie Girl

The Vaguely Asian Girl
The Blatant Exploitation Girl

The Strangely Enigmatic European Girl With Rosy Cheeks And A Weird Accent Who Turns Out To Be A Man (Not A Boy)

The Anything But WASP Because It's Boring Girl

(and oh, I'm so tired now and must lie down).

POST-POST. I must stop researching this subject, because I just keep finding dozens and dozens more. The following list may or may not be satiric. Some of them sound just plain DUMB. The Girl With the Caterpillar Eyebrows? The Girl with the Funny Buttons? Jesus. Why didn't MY books get anywhere? I guess I'm just too old to be a whore. And too honest. 

This is, by the way, only a tiny fragment of the full list. Do ALL of these sell, I wonder? They must sell a hell of a lot better than my stuff. 

The Girl Who Lived on the Moon, by Frank Delaney The Girl Who Couldn’t Smile, by Shane Dunphy The Girl Who Could Silence the Wind, by Meg Medina The Girl Who Dreamed of Ships, by Beverly Scofield The Girl Who Wears Gumamela Flower, by Heidy Ramos The Girl Who Loves Horses, by Diana Vincent The Girl Who Fished With a Worm, by Harry Groome The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, by Simon Mawer The Girl With the Dove Tattoo, by Brian D. McLaren The Girl With Hair Like the Sun, by Claire Mix and Aaron Miller The Girl With the Killer Heels, by Freddy Hansen The Girl With Borrowed Wings, by Rinsai Rossetti The Girl Who Would Be King, by Kelly Thompson The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There, by Catherynne M. Valente The Girl Who Swam to Atlantis, by Elle Thornton The Girl Who Fell to Earth, by Sophia Al-Maria The Girl Who Gave Her Wish Away, by Sharon Babineau The Girl With the Golden Hair, by Greg Scarlett The Girl Who Was Blue, by Sally O. Lee The Girl With Chipmunk Hands, by Binks and Ruby Begonia The Girl Who Cried Wolf, by Robert Ferrigno The Girl With the Yellow Dress, by Giancarlo Gabbrielli The Girl With a Brave Heart, by Rita Jahanforuz and Vali Mintzi The Girl With No Name: The Incredible Story of a Child Raised by Monkeys, by Marina Chapman with Vanessa James and Lynne Barrett-Lee The Girl Who Blamed the World, by Cindy Mackey and Shirley Chiang The Girl Who Married an Eagle, by Tamar Myers The Girl With the Iron Touch, by Kady Cross The Girl With the Golden Parasol, by Uday Prakash and Jason Grunebaum The Girl Who Cried “Wolf!,” by Nancy Jensen with Nathan Swink The Girl Who Can’t Say No: Bound to the Billionaire, by Ashley Spector The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die, by April Henry The Girl Who Stole My Holocaust: A Memoir, by Noam Chayut The Girl Who Loved Camellias: The Life and Legend of Marie Duplessis, by Julie Kavanagh The Girl Who Got Out of Bed, by Betsy Childs The Girl Who Wrote Erotica, by Angela Jordan The Girl With the Funny Buttons, by Roberto Di Falco and Silvia Hoefnagels The Girl With the Caterpillar Eyebrows, by Lisa Ditchkoff The Girl Who Bit Back, by E. Earle The Girl With the Sandwich Tattoo, by Dragon Stiegsson The Girl Who Wouldn’t Brush Her Hair, by Kate Bernheimer and Jake Parker The Girl Who Heard Colors, by Marie Harris and Vanessa Brantley Newton The Girl With the Cinnamon Twist, by Stephen Dennis The Girl Who Grew a Galaxy, by Cherie Dimaline  The Girl Who Sang to the Buffalo: A Child, an Elder, and the Light From an Ancient Sky, by Kent Nerburn The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two, by Catherynne M. Valente The Girl With the Werewolf Tattoo, by Alexia Wells The Girl With the Electric Sunglasses, by G. Dawe The Girl Who Danced in a Blood Soaked Dress, by Craig Campbell The Girl With Nine Lives, by E. Earle The Girl Who Was Loved, by Annabelle Peep The Girl With the Thistle Tattoo, by Patricia Green The Girl Who Thought Too Much, by Rosa Edwards The Girl With the Pink Bandanna, by Roberto Di Falco and Silvia Hoefnagels The Girl Who Never Came Back, by Amy Cross The Girl With the Curves, by Iris Deorre