Voyage Into The Golden Screen

In the golden garden bird of peace
Stands the silver girl the Wild Jewels niece
Paints and pretty colors Children's drawings on the wall
Look of doubt I cast you out be gone your ragged call





In the forest thick a trick of light
Makes an image magnet to my sight
Gown of purple velvet enchanted glazed eye
The sound of wings and sparkling rings behold a crimson sky

Tread so light so not to touch the grass
Breathe the air so slowly as you pass
Silent sudden dewdrop lies unseen until
Eyes to fall to hidden call the power of Love and Will

Symphonies of seaweed dance and swoon
God's celestial shore beneath the moon
See the dark and mighty peaks pierce the cumulus
Violet and mauve they sit power you can sus'

Tread so light so not to touch the grass
Breathe the air so slowly as you pass
Elvin fingers clutch a deep black cloak of fine damask
Aged rock in Mexico reveal a bejeweled cask

In the golden garden bird of peace
Stands the silver girl the Wild Jewels niece
Paints and pretty colors Children's drawings on the wall
Look of doubt I cast you out be gone your ragged call

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Ooooooh, I love Onions! (or: Go Get a Book Deal)

Child’s Description Of Heaven During Near-Death Experience Specifically Mentions Book Deal




NEWS IN BRIEFJuly 17, 2015

VOL 51 ISSUE 28 Local · Death · Books · Kids


NEW YORK—Speaking for the first time since waking from a medically induced coma following a devastating car accident, 8-year-old Aiden Miller recounted an extremely vivid near-death experience Friday that reportedly contained detailed descriptions of heaven, angels, and a six-figure book deal. “I was walking up in the clouds and met friends, and strangers, and all these famous people who talked with me about all kinds of things and brought up the possibility of selling the rights to my story to a big-name publisher,” said the second-grader, who attested that during the five-minute period in which his heart had stopped on the operating table, he ascended to a shining, golden paradise where he says he met with the archangel Gabriel and a literary agent who has helped a number of authors secure multi-book deals with lucrative worldwide book tours. “Jesus was sitting at the right hand of God and my grandfather was right there, and they looked at me and smiled at each other and said I should ask for an $80,000 advance with 10 percent of back-end profits.” Miller added that he felt a profound sense of peace and well-being when Jesus told him to go forth and seek a blockbuster deal for the movie rights.

(And The Onion is always right, folks. This kid must have the same agent as Harper Lee.)

Hot town: screams in the night

It was one of them-thar hot, HOT summers in Chatham, in the heel of Southwestern Ontario, when it felt like someone was holding something to your nose and mouth so you could not breathe. Sweat accumulted in layers on your skin, but if it evaporated at all, it provided no relief from the relentless, doggy heat.

We didn't take showers then, because you just didn't - women washed their hair in the sink and wrapped a towel around their head, turban-style (God knows why, or how they ever dried it). If you were so hot you were turning into melted rubber, you lay in a bath tub full of tepid water, drained it, and felt more moist and clammy than ever. As far as I know, people didn't bathe every day, nor were clothes washed as often, but perhaps the predominance of natural fibres kept us from keeling over from each other's stench.

The humidity devil did not let up often. But on certain nights the sky suddenly cracked open, and floods of lukewarm rain caused some of us (mostly kids, or a few heat-crazed adults) to strip down to our bare essentials and go out in it, dancing around, hair streaming, mouth open. The cracks of livid electricity almost made my hair stand on end, and sometimes I felt it zip up my arms as if it wanted me for some awful unknown purpose.

But the buckets of rain did not help. Soon everything was just steaming, the air more choked with water than before.

Cicadas buzzed their long, almost sexual-sounding arches of sound on those summer afternoons in which time seemed to hang suspended. We didn't like finding the adults - "June bugs", they were usually called, big fat things with wings - but the cast-off shells of the nymphs were magical. They appeared all over the bark of the elm trees that would all-too-soon be felled due to disease, never to be seen again.

But at night, there was this - this sound! A night bird, one that I called "the Skeezix bird" because that's what it sounded like. On damp, hollow, star-filled Chatham nights, the Skeezix would begin to swoop in the sky, the sound swinging near and far so that you couldn't tell exactly where it was. I don't think I ever saw one.  It had to be some kind of hawk or falcon. But nobody ever referred to it or talked about it. It was just there, like the sexy drawn-out tambourine-hiss of the cicadas. All part of summer in the city.

But when I heard the Skeezix bird, every so often I also heard the strangest sound, halfway between a burp and a groan. Short, hollow, and - stupid really, because obviously it had nothing to do with the bird, yet there it was, persistent. I even asked other people about it once, and no one had ever heard it. It seemed like nobody really wanted to talk about it. At least they looked at me strangely, though I suppose by then I should have been used to that.

Then one time, my older brother said, "You know that booming noise? It's sound waves from the hawk bouncing off buildings."

It wasn't. In fact, until this very moment I didn't know what the hell it was or how it could be related to the Skeezix bird.

Then came this answer, this beautiful, golden Answer. Simply laid out. Not even any video, just a clear audio explanation with pictures. There WAS a Skeezix bird, even if it was called something else. If it was creating that groany boom out in nature, obviously it had nothing to do with sound waves and buildings.

The real explanation is exotic and a little far-fetched, but it must be true. It just took me fifty years to find it. Play the video above, and be enlightened.

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Just like the heat, it'll be all right

Classic Phil Spector wall-of-sound genius

Gigantic cat head conquers Tokyo!

A group of students at the Japan School of Wool Art have created a startlingly realistic, gigantic wool felt cat head that can be worn as a mask. The project was led by the students’ art teacher, Housetu Sato.

The head will be on display at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum from April 18-23, 2015. Although there are no current plans to make more or sell the giant cat head, the recent online attention the artwork is generating may change things…

[via Laughing Squid]

Introducing the EGG MASTER!

Kitchen gadgets review: the Egg Master – a horrifying, unholy affair

I can’t look at the hot sweating mess that emerges from the Egg Master’s opening, let alone eat it

The egg roll writhes like an alien parasite in search of a host body … Rhik Samadder testing the Egg Master. Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian

What?

The Egg Master is a vertical grill encased in silicone housing. Ingredients poured into the plastic tube are heated by an embedded, wraparound element. When ready, food spontaneously rises from the device.
Why?

Because there is no God.

The Egg Master has to be observed in all its slow-mo action to be truly appreciated.

Well?

This week’s gadget describes itself as “a new way to prepare eggs”, which is accurate in the way that chopping off your legs could be described as a new way to lose weight. Let’s start with that name, its unsettling taint of S&M, an overtone consistent with the design. In hot pink and stippled black rubber, Egg Master’s exterior screams cut-price, mail-order adult toy; its funnelled hole suggests terrible uses. And it has a traffic light on it, for some reason.

“Spray non-stick agent into container”, the box advises, which definitely gets the tummy rumbling. As instructed, I crack two whole eggs into the hot tunnel, trying to ignore the gurgling sound from within. It’s impossible to see what’s going on – but it smells bad. I squint into the dark opening. A bulging yellow sac peers back at me. Minutes pass; the smell does not. Then, without warning, a flaccid, spongy log half jumps from the machine, writhing like an alien parasite in search of a host body. It’s horrifying, like a scene from The Lair of the White Worm.

I can’t look at it, let alone eat it. To stall, I consult the badly photocopied handbook, which suggests other delicious treats this baby is good for. Egg Master Egg Crackers, which is mixed-up crackers, egg and cheese; Egg Master Egg Dog; PB&J (peanut butter and jelly) Egg Master, and the tantalising Cuban Egg Master. It’s a dossier of culinary hate crimes (barbecue Pork Egg Master has two ingredients, “biscuit dough and three teaspoons of precooked pork”). Nervously, I try the sulphuric, sweating egg mess before me. The taste is … not the best. As I dry heave into the sink, I try to remember if I read about this machine in the Book of Revelation. Why is it in the world? Who created it? Maybe no one. Perhaps soon, sooner than you think, we will all bow to the Egg Master.

Redeeming features?

It’s quite space-efficient, being so dense with evil. The box contains free wooden skewers, to defend yourself from your food, and a pipe cleaner to swab the device, although no holy water to soak it in.
Counter, drawer, back of the cupboard?

Under the floorboards. 5/5. Just kidding. 0/5.

Wait, there's more!

I'm sorry. . . no, really.

There's a word for that

Since a non-updated blog is worse than a neglected lawn, here is something that is doing the rounds. No one can ever accuse me of stealing anything, ever again, because everything is everywhere, especially on the completely useless Pinterest which does NOT give you links to that cute knitting pattern that you crave so much.

It just shows you what the things are. There. Look. Done.

This sounds a bit like something you'd say after a sneeze (and by the way, I HATE "bless you" because it is not only useless, it is prissy, antiquated and implies that sneezing is so Satanic that we have to say a little incantation over it, to which you are supposed to/HAVE to reply, "thank you," even if you hate the custom like worms.)

I have a lot of these. By the way, have you ever noticed how useless coasters are? All the water from condensation pools up on them, then when you pick your glass up (unsticking it from the coaster first), the accumulation dribbles wetly down your front. I have designed my own coasters made of felt glued to cork, various fabrics, and even hollowed-out sponge that fastens to the bottom of the glass. No one seems to want these.

Oh yes, we all know this one but never coined a word for it. Happens at least once a week around here, when two of the grandgirls, the blondie Scandinavian-looking ones, drop by. By the way, where did such white-blonde hair come from in our family system? Their mother is a dark brunette, and any blondeness in the rest of the family is of the dirty/darkened variety. How far back does this stuff go? 

GLORY be to God for dappled things 

For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; 

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; 

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings. . . 

I think this is a nice way of saying "rude annoying none-o'-yer-bizness" types. What's it to you? Why do you want to know? You Pochemuchka.

That's always the sweetest part, isn't it? The dessert after the dessert. That time when you're just not quite ready to break up the party. That little conversation in the parking lot of the restaurant that doesn't quite want to end.

This isn't quite the same as "Jayzus!!", but conveys a similar sentiment as you listen, for perhaps the 14th time, to a good joke told very badly. Even worse than that is the fake, polite way people laugh at it, because you're supposed to laugh at a joke. Next time you're at a social function, count the laughs. At the end of the evening, do a tally: how many were genuine laughs, and how many were fake, social ha-ha-ha-ha-has?

I would do anything in Hawaiian, even scratch my head to remember something. I love the place, love the soft embrace of the air and the way you can go about in a bathing suit with jiggling legs and a jiggling fanny, and nobody cares. 

I had this in the States once, and couldn't wait to get out of there. We have so much bad press/bad vibes piped our way from news items and the popular culture that it's easy to believe they're all a bunch of pistol-packin' yahoos. It's a distortion created in part by the American press, ironically, though Canadians do their share of high-horsitude about it all, as if we're not also rotten with petty crime and gang wars.  But I think  that, in a manner of speaking, the good folk in the United States generally trump the bad.

Uh, so you buy, it, I guess.

Never thought it was roadlike, more moonlike, but it does move around a lot, doesn't it? 

  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA