Pink fairy - squishy-scary

Be aware that I don't choose these things. In my never-ending thirst for knowledge, they come to me, attracted, no doubt, by a mixture of curiosity and disbelief.

This thing, this whatever-it-is, like a shrimp shell with fur, or a hamster trick-or-treating in a lobster suit - it scares me to think that these things are scampering around, apparently cute except for the four-inch talons that could probably rip your throat out if you looked at it wrong. It was hard for me to believe it was real, so I had to dig around for more images, sort of like turning over rocks in your back yard to see what slimy things you can find.

This looks like a sea monkey, only bigger. It looks like a sea monkey might look if it actually stayed alive and grew into something, rather than dying in the first week and turning to brown scum on top of the water. 

Then I found one that moved. . .

This primitive, struggling, fur-clogged thing, this thing that looks like it should have died out millions of years ago along with the trilobite, is an animal so primitive, so small-brained, that when you lift it off the ground it keeps working its feet because it thinks it's still walking.

Having proven it actually exists and isn't just some taxidermic hoax, I had to Wiki it (my main source of knowledge these days), and found the following:

Pink fairy armadillo

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Pink fairy armadillo[1]
Conservation status
Data Deficient (IUCN 3.1)[2]
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Cingulata
Family:	Dasypodidae
Subfamily:	Euphractinae
Genus:	Chlamyphorus Harlan, 1825
Species:	C. truncatus
Binomial name
Chlamyphorus truncatus Harlan, 1825
Pink fairy armadillo range

The pink fairy armadillo (Chlamyphorus truncatus) or pichiciego is the smallest species of armadillo (mammals of the family Dasypodidae, mostly known for having a bony armor shell). It is found in central Argentina, where it inhabits dry grasslands and sandy plains with thorn bushes and cacti.

The pink fairy armadillo is approximately 90–115 mm (3.5-4.5 inches) long, excluding the tail, and is pale rose or pink in color. It has the ability to bury itself completely in a matter of seconds if frightened.

It is a nocturnal animal. It burrows small holes near ant colonies in dry soil, and feeds mainly on ants and ant larvae near its burrow. Occasionally, it feeds on worms, snails, insects and larvae, or various plant and root material.

The pink fairy armadillo spends much of its time under the ground, as it is a "sand swimmer" similar to the golden mole or the marsupial mole.^{[citation needed]} It uses large front claws to agitate the sand, allowing it to almost swim through the ground in a manner reminiscent of swimming through water. It is torpedo-shaped, and has a shielded head and back.

The above picture may well be a hoax. I don't think it's a pink fairy armadillo, or any sort of armadillo. Take a look at those feet - they're made out of cantaloupe spears. Carmen Miranda could wear this thing on her head! And the eyes are far too big, made of blueberries or, perhaps, black olives. 

Pink fairies no longer scare me, not if they're actually edible.

But worse horrors awaited me. Salamanders. Giant salamanders. Giant salamanders that thrashed violently in people's arms. Salamanders that attacked. This one looks like a mammoth Chee-toh or a pizza gone terribly wrong. Except it seems to be made out of some sort of vinyl.

When I was a kid, I always wanted a newt, a toad, a mudpuppy, whatever I could catch that crawled or slithered. I would have loved to collect a salamander, but I never saw one, just read about them. Now I realize I was saved by the grace of God, by a divine Providence that snatched me out of the path of the Behemoth. What would these things eat? Why do they exist at all? What is evolution all about, and why is ANY of it here, when we started off as nothing?

I don't know if this cheers me up, or not.

Pream or scream?

I love Pream ads more than life itself, because they're so odd. (For those who are less than 100 years old, Pream was the first powdered coffee creamer, and it was made of milk solids, which is why it ultimately failed. The damn stuff just didn't dissolve in coffee and turned to sludge at the bottom.)

Oddest of the odd is this lady with her weird facial expressions, which lent themselves to manipulation through screenshots. I was surprised to see how easily I could completely change the look on her face, from puzzlement to near-paranoia. 

She obviously has her doubts about that Pream.

The cat with kaleidoscope eyes

It's rare to see a cat with two differently-colored eyes (heterochromia), but even more rare to see sectoral heterochromia, in which each eye has two or more colors. It gives these cats an eerie look, and as you can tell from the pictures, usually (for reasons unknown) they're white. Except for this remarkable kitty. . .

Those who've been off the internet grid for a couple of years won't have heard of Venus, who has been called a "chimera cat" because she is supposedly her own fraternal twin. In truth, she's probably just an unlikely-colored calico (sometimes called a tortoise-shell or "tortie") who happens to have heterochromic eyes. Other cats have popped up on Google images with similar facial markings, but no other cat has that glamorous blue-and-gold "I vahnt to be alone" gaze.

Hot dog monster

Cooking tip: clean the rake first.

Harold's moment of glory

Ten seconds of movie history! The scene that secured Harold Lloyd as one of the three great geniuses of silent comedy.

WHEN CRANES ATTACK!

Bears run! 

Gators hide!

Poor little kitty

Gonna go for a ride!

Dogs scamper

Flowers cringe

And the poor armadillo

Is going off its hinge

IT'S THE CRANES

(the cranes)

THE CRANES

(the cranes)

The rockin' and a-rollin'

Peckin' and a-trollin'

Gopher-eatin', bear chasin', wing-flappin'

SANDHILL CRANES!

The actor: Harold Lloyd's reaction shots

A memorable Harold Lloyd reaction shot from Girl Shy. Harold plays a yokel whose book "How to Make Love" has just been rejected by a publisher as ridiculous and worthless. But his expression isn't a reaction to that humiliation. This was his one chance to win a very wealthy girl he has fallen in love with, and that dream has just turned to dust.  

This scene proves what Hal Roach famously said: "Harold Lloyd was not a comedian. But he was the best actor playing a comedian who ever lived." Any dramatic actor would be hard-pressed to sustain scenes of emotional distress with such skill. 

He himself didn't think he was very funny, but he could "do" funny superbly. His pathos never turned to bathos, as sometimes happened with Chaplin (whose films are much more dated than Harold's). And as Roach said, Harold was a plausible leading man whose romantic quests weren't vaguely creepy or driven by pity.

Harold didn't wear a clown suit or pull faces or do any of the things silent comics did to get a laugh. He was an ordinary person caught up in extraordinary circumstances, and his complete inability to cope brought the audience on-side like nothing else. But when he triumphed in the end, all of our own failed fantasies were brilliantly realized. 

And one more thing - he always got the girl.

Rescuing Cats From Super Tall Trees

These two guys are my heroes! They're arborists (we used to call them tree surgeons) who have a sideline which is fast becoming a specialty: rescuing cats stuck in trees. The plaintive meowing of these poor little creatures is pathetic to hear, but the reunions with anxious owners is gratifying. They used to be on a show called Treetop Cat Rescue which was on Animal Planet, but they only made about eight episodes (which I keep watching, whenever I need to remind myself that there is MORE to life and the world than the direness, misery and hate we all see on the news every day).

Screenshots: Harold in stop motion

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This may not look like much to you (and, in fact, it isn't), but for me it represents something big: my first attempt to capture stills from video. I never even tried this for years, because every time I went on a site to find out how to do it, the instructions seemed more and more complex and full of bafflegab (not to mention contradictory, with everyone describing a different method). Then, bingo, I found a page today where you only have to highlight, copy, paste, and click. 

Et voila! You have a screenshot.

The thing of it is, though, that taking a series of screenshots and then putting them back together into an animation is kind of - well, it's a little redundant. An exercise, at best. I tell myself: honest to God, I can't help but learn something about REAL animation this way. But a gif would do just as well, wouldn't it? Or better.

But perhaps not. This way I can edit scenes, add characters, use title cards, include surreal images, and all manner of other stuff, once I know what I'm doing.

This is a kind of stop motion Harold cartoon. Claymation, if you will. His middle name was Clayton, after all. I have fantasies of manipulating this little clay figure, making him do things, even things he doesn't want to do. . . time to go to bed, Margaret.