Bizarre YouTube video of the week (if not the century)

Believe me when I say, I cannot find ANY YouTube video with Rich Correll in it. Hardly any, anyway. I mean, old Hollywood Squares episodes so compromised in quality, so melted of acetate that they look like bad trips. One sliver of a documentary about Stan Laurel from 20-some years ago. That's it. This is the same Rich Correll I wrote about in Searching for Rich Correll, a post from several years ago which I plan to rerun, if only to give me a sense of perspective. It's all about seeking the Chimera, the unicorn of good fortune, and seeing its ass bounding into the woods again.

Being of bloodhound blood type, I can do nothing but pursue: "I sought him, down the nights and down the days. . . " Oh, oopsy, that's "fled him", but it might as well be fled, for all it has netted me.

I don't know if he has my book in his hands or not. He has talked to me on the phone twice. Unexpectedly, for I wondered if he would be truly interested. I sent him 300 pages of loose manuscript, a truly dumb thing to do, then phoned him and told him not to read it. I wonder if we really got off to such a good start.

He hasn't answered my emails, but in this he's like 95% of other people. I wonder, am I cursed, or is this just the way the world is now? My world, anyway. I may never find out.

I can't say the visuals are too effective here, though right at the beginning you see Richard and Beav walking down the street talking, I mean just talking normal, and there are English subtitles. Then the camera sort of goes sideways, and stays there. Maybe this was shot by Antonioni or something, one of those cool directors from the '60s.

Maybe there's more, who knows. Maybe we will talk again, he'll actually read my book, or he won't, or he'll forget all about it. The mud puddles I step into always seem to be completely bottomless.

Harold Lloyd, Freemason: just a dull men's club?

I keep thinking I've gotten to the bottom of the barrel of craziness that surrounds Harold Lloyd. Not a bit of it. Here is a piece almost as strange as the "psychic bridging" site I found years ago while still writing the novel, then couldn't find again, ever. It disappeared in the night. The psychic bridging was some sort of time travel or remote viewing, where supposedly you could see into any era or period of time while remaining in the present. Harold Lloyd's name was mentioned in the piece in a most alarming way. The writer said he "became self-detached during filming" in the 1940s (he did make his last film in that time) and had to be hospitalized. But why, how - wtf?? 

Anyway, it all disappeared, and I never did find out if Harold worked for the CIA during the Cold War or what. Being as he was Imperial Potentate of the Shrine, Shriners being  Freemasons on steroids, there is much to indicate that he had more than a passing relationship with mysticism. That doesn't mean he appears in my living room at night (oh dang, I wasn't going to tell anybody).

I swear I didn't write the following piece, but it interests me, because with all his Masonic orientation (from his late 20s until the end of his life), there might be some sort of subconscious symbolism working its way out in this brilliant, but admittedly very strange movie with the oh-so-Lloydian title, Never Weaken.

Anyway, Just Wondering, whoever you are, I am lifting a piece of this article (which I have since realized has been reblogged all over the place, so who knows where it really came from) because I like it. I will offer my own interpretation shortly.

The Hanged Man Of Tarot In Popular Culture

What do Harold Lloyd, Ringo Starr, and Eddie Van Halen all have in common?

They've all appeared in movies or videos as "a man hanging upside-down from a rope by one leg and crossing the other leg".

That would be quite a coincidence if they were not all mimicking the same thing, The Hanged Man, which is the twelfth card in the Tarot deck.

Harold Lloyd is hoodwinked but then "enlightened" in the short film "Never Weaken" (1921).

 
Harold Lloyd's "Never Weaken" (1921) is full of masonic imagery.  He sits in a chair and blindfolds himself to commit suicide, but is lifted up through the air by a construction girder.  He hears harp music and takes off his blindfold to see a beautiful angel.  Only when he hears jazz does he realize that the angel is not real and he is not in heaven but high above the street and about to fall to his death.  He makes it back to safety.

In masonic terms, he is initiated by sitting in a throne, being hoodwinked, facing death, and being deceived.  He is a "hanged man", suspended on a steel beam between life and death.  He is then enlightened to a higher plane of understanding when the veil is lifted from his eyes and he perceives reality.

There is also a ring-on-a-string marriage ritual, a blood ritual, and a lot of focus on men's rear ends.

Everyone remembers Harold Lloyd hanging from a clock in Safety Last (1923) but nobody seems to remember the next scene where he swings upside-down from a rope by one leg:

Not bad stunts for a man who lost his thumb and forefinger four years earlier.

Harold Lloyd swinging from a rope with one leg bent in "Safety Last".

There are bank and stock exchange signs in the background, six years prior to the Stock Market Crash of 1929.

Get it?  It's predictive programming:  Safety Last-taking huge risks-bank-stock exchange-patriotic flag-nobody gets hurt-happy ending.

BLOGGER'S NOTE. I think all that blindfold/shooting-yourself-in-the-heart-for-love stuff is darkly erotic, as is the long, funny but rather disturbing chain of suicide gags (in which he goes to the dictionary to check the spelling of a word - sepulchre - in his suicide note). The helplessness of the blindfold, his chair being suspended in mid-air, the stone angel and harp music, the ecstatic and almost orgasmic facial expression as he unmasks himself and reaches out for Eternity. . . well, it's all pretty sexy as far as I am concerned. Then that immortal scene of realization that he. Isn't. In. Heaven. At. All. 

There is blood in this, yes, actual blood, when he pricks his finger trying to impale himself on one of those spikes they used to stick notes on. Is this an unconscious (pun intended) reference to Sleeping Beauty fatally pricking her finger on a spindle? He does swoon in another scene, losing consciousness, almost falling out of his chair. If you want to look for Freudian flying/falling/bleeding/dying/surrealistic/Masonic/angelic/phallic symbols in this thing, you'll find them. It's chock-a-block.

As for being blindfolded,  Harold Lloyd was blind for a while, after the legendary accident which shaped the rest of his career/life. No one knew if he would ever see again, and one can imagine the terror, the helplessness of having to lie there, burned and maimed and blind. . . The joy and even ecstasy with which he reaches out for the Angel of Death in the movie might even reflect his profound desire to die and be done with this agony. Perhaps he even considered suicide himself: it's not a funny topic, but it somehow found its way into two of his movies. 

Well, why not a hanged man? He was into all that Masonic stuff, wasn't he? Magic shows, Tarot cards, deals with the devil? Haitian voodoo (no, that's me). God knows what else I'll find, that he was a polygamist or something, or worse than that, a Rotarian.

(Weird, weird stuff. . . I've been trying to post a gif of Harold suspended on the chair, and it keeps. . . disappearing. First it half-disappeared. This has never happened to me before, ever, in my entire career of fooling around with/making gifs. Then it just vanished, though a ghostly outline allows me to make it small, medium or large. BUT IT ISN'T THERE! I tried to put it back, and I can't put it back because, in fact, it is already there. . . I just can't see it.)

Further revelations on the Freemason Connection.  I decided to re-run this post because the subject is so fascinating, and I'm beginning to think it even has some truth in it. Harold was so deeply saturated in the ritual of the Shrine that they actually struck a coin with his likeness on it (don't worry, I'm not going to buy it, though it's tempting, only $35 on eBay). I also found, weirdness of weirdnesses, a whole lot of photos of an even stranger item, a Shriner scimitar - all part of that ritualistic stuff, and though it doesn't tell us what exactly the connection is, Harold Lloyd's name is associated with it. And it has a very strange handle. 

The flip side. We saw a picture of one of these on the bumper of a car recently, and I said, "oh look, a Freemason symbol," and my husband said, "no, that's an engineer's compass." So who knows. Who stole it from whom?

Kind of hard to believe all that evil conspiracy stuff when you see something like this.

I don't know what this is for sure, something painted on ivory or a plate or something? I forgot to keep the reference, and now I don't want to look it up again.

Harold having a whale of a time with Roy Rogers, Red Skelton and someone else famous, can't quite recognize him but he looks familiar. Harold Lloyd and Red Skelton. Skelton. Hmmmm. Or is it Red SKELETON? (You decide.)

Harold as Imperial Potentate, the chief honcho/Grand Poo-Bah of the Shrine. Not too shabby. I can't quite figure out if that's his Dad, the beloved Foxy, pointing to something. 

The boot-handled scimitar. Now THIS is weird. Sado-masochism, a foot fetish, jackboots, what? Did anyone ever USE the scimitar, and for what? Did this really belong to Harold, and why did it have a foot on the end of it? The questions never end.

Yikes!

Hmmmm. This looks a little bit like a prosthetic leg. Harold had a prosthetic hand. Just a coincidence? 

I. . . DON'T. . . THINK. . . SO!

Geese What? Goslings Galore! (part 2)

Fun with the geese! This is part 2 of our short video of all those geese at Sasamat Lake. About 24 of them in total, though it's hard to count all those goslings running around. These came in various sizes according to when they hatched.

Geese What? Goslings Galore! (part 1)

While walking on the shores of beautiful Sasamat Lake, we had a delightful surprise - three families of Canada geese with a total of eighteen goslings, in three different age groups (small, medium and large, but all of them still fuzzy and flightless). The peeping was something to hear. I already love this place, and now we have an incentive to come back. These geese are smart to reproduce now, as Sasamat Lake is overrun with people in July and August. We don't usually go near it then. Most years we don't see goslings at all, but this is the second time this spring that we've seen a lot of them at once (ten at Como Lake).

Crafts with Caitlin: FAKE CAKE!

Making fake cake with Caitlin was tons of fun, and Ryan was a reluctantly cooperative judge. Now Caitlin wants her own YouTube channel! Caitlin Crafts, Craftygirl, or some-such. Something tells me Grandma will be involved.

A few good fails: epic gif disasters

"Epic fail" gifs are kind of a cheap trick, but let's do some anyway. Fat guy falling through ice. . .

Some of them, you can tell, are kind of staged, but the sincere attempts at outlandish stunts are truly groan-worthy.

Horse fail!

This one looks real, for sure - some rotten little brother.

Real or faked? Could a golf club do this? You decide.

Now who is this - Rita Hayworth or something? I'd say it was staged, but the actor's lunge forward is so panicky that I don't think so (and such a stunt would be too hazardous for a star).

Hamster wheel fail.

Fat guys fall down funnier than thin guys, especially when spinning around on an office chair.

Dog fail!

"But the dog didn't get hurt. . . "

Stump fail! Again, suspicious, because that truck is such an old junker.

I've saved the best 'til last.

Order The Glass Character from:

Thistledown Press 

http://www.thistledownpress.com/html/search/genre/Fiction/the_glass_character_p580.cfm

Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/Glass-Character-Margaret-Gunning/dp/1927068886/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1395534131&sr=1-1&keywords=the+glass+character

Chapters/Indigo.ca

http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/the-glass-character/9781927068885-item.html?ikwid=the%2520glass%2520character%2520margaret%2520gunning&ikwsec=Home

Just like Brian Wilson

Truly awful real estate agent photos: an art form for our times

It's late, I'm tired, but I feel a bit guilty that I haven't blogged in a few days. Usually I enjoy it, but right now I'm wrapped up in more medical tests (easy-peasy today, a CT scan in which I was all finished ten minutes before my appointment time - something paranormal about that machine), family problems that I can't even begin to address (but which seemed somewhat better today), and endless preparations for a book launch which will probably net me about two sales. Nevertheless!

I keep being directed back to this site through Facebook. It's sort of like going to a sideshow: you look through your fingers, but you nevertheless look. These are (we think) actual photos taken by actual realtors to sell actual houses. The followup is never mentioned. The ones I post here are not, believe me, the most extreme examples, some of which are stomach-turning and seem to be fresh murder scenes not yet investigated by the police.

Part of the charm of these weird things is the godawful photography, just abysmal. Even I could do better. This one should be captioned "the light at the end of the tunnel: or, my near-death experience".

Remember before we could delete photos, when we had to have a whole roll developed, and out of 24, 22 would have someone's thumb in the corner?

And why take a picture of somebody's stove?

Weird or inappropriate decor. These settings look disturbingly similar to me.

It's important to put some serious dollars into fixing up your house before putting it on the market. Shows it off to its best advantage.

This is a series called "inappropriate toilets".This matched set would be good for the Doublemint twins.

I can think of a million jokes, but really, this situation is too bizarre to joke about.

Front-row seats! Do they hold up little cards, do you think?

Ah, right by the front door! Convenient, isn't it? If you really have to go when you get home from work - perhaps. But I'm worried about the placement of that mail slot. 

It's strange what realtors consider to be a selling point. I'd put up a baby gate so you couldn't go upstairs.

Dead goose in the rafters: are the holes in the roof that big?

I just can't comment.

"Built-in air conditioning!" "Ideal for someone with one leg shorter than the other!" Bah, I'm to bed.

(oh no, oh no, oh no. Oh NO NO NO NO NO NO NO. But yes. Here it is. One even worse.)

At first I thought this was some sort of perverted church, until I looked at the furniture. It's somebody's house. The windows, well, by God. . . I don't know what to say. It's a cock, is what it is, all done up in glass. Whee dogies.