The Glass Character

Friday, February 17, 2017

A George Takei moment

I have been looking for this for YEARS! You know those Pinterest atrocities - chunks and hunks of images, half the text cut off - abominations, really. I found a piece of this image several years ago and went looking for the rest of it, and couldn't find anything. Nothing whole, anyway. People carve things up into Facebook profile pictures/covers, YouTube avatars, etc. But at last, when I least expected it, when I was looking for something else, this popped out at me.

I think it is simply glorious, and in pristine condition. It is THE post-War spirit, complete freedom from care and restriction. No more rationing of happiness or anything else! The fierce glare of the car only adds to the atmosphere, the bared teeth and aggressive, staring headlights.

And then I found this:

I think this was originally two pages in a magazine. I have seen, somewhere, a poster-ish version of the first page, but it's inaccessible to me.

I am having a George Takei moment.

OH MY.

Meanwhile, please join my Festival of Old Red Buicks. I would have made a slideshow out of this, as usual, but the proportions didn't work, so I'll glom them all together into one "thing".

An old guy driving a beautiful old Buick.

Thursday, February 16, 2017

Why do we live and die? Thoughts late at night

These are a few thoughts from late at night. I didn't know I was going to say them. Please forgive the cliche-y thumbnail. There was no thumbnail to this one at all, because the video was so dark. I'm slowly learning that a video needs a decent thumbnail. For years my eye has been caught by them, but I didn't know it was happening. At any rate, these are the thoughts that come to you late at night, just from wherever, from your life.

Paperback writer: come take a look

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

So what is this? Anyway?? For a long time, I posted a gif at the bottom of my blog entries, along with a link to my Amazon author page. It was a kind of signature, along with a little publicity for my actual work. So why did I stop? I got soooooooo sick of doing it, and felt it was so utterly futile ( I mean, WHO goes on my Amazon author page?) that I dropped it. But I was left with this super-cute collection of signature gifs. I have a few thousand gifs in my collection, most of which I made myself. It would be nice to think that SOMEONE might go on my page, just to take a look at everything I've written - and by the way, all three of my novels are still for sale! Maybe I'll start doing it again. Doesn't seem likely, but maybe.

Safety Product Fail

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Shot to shit in the shower

Donald Trump vs Justin Trudeau: The political handshake

I! Love!! This!!! I cannot tell you how elated I feel! I guess that reveals how I will grasp at any little scrap of hope in the miserable slag-heap of the Trump administration. But I have never been more proud to be a Canadian. Justin Trudeau may look like a pretty boy, but he is actually very tough, a trained boxer and athlete who has a sort of martial-arts-style grace. So when it came time to meet his adversary, Trump soon became prey. Justin had obviously sized up his opponent and realized he had to jump in with ferocious confidence. He literally grabbed the man by the arm while squeezing his hand, disabling that infamous arrogant jerk-you-around "handshake". He had him in his grip, from both sides! I keep watching and watching this video because for some absurd, insane reason, it gives me hope.

I'm psycho, too

Wednesday, February 15, 2017

Dear neighbour, sorry!

Busy day: surrealism in advertising

We all go a little mad sometimes

A strange animation. This was put together from a half-dozen still pictures gleaned from Psycho, the famous parlour scene in which Norman eerily proclaims, "We all go a little mad sometimes." As you can see, there is a frame or two missing here and there.

This was an unusual project. I tried to get as many facial expressions out of six frames as possible. Norman's kind of a strange character anyway, so watching him twitch around and go from ranty to sweet in a nanosecond is nothing new.

But it was also an eerie feeling. These are just still pictures taken from a movie from more than 50 years ago. Yet there are moments - seconds - when something seems to be happening. Some kind of movement, an integrity between the frames that creates - something. Animation fools the eye. Film itself is an illusion, a lot of still pictures that the eye or the brain kindly blurs together and interprets as motion. It's also kind of strange that the background is so similar, though the fact that it kind of seethes in and out adds a special weirdness. The pictures aren't all framed exactly the same, though they're closer than most groups of movie stills even approach. Only one of them is way out of proportion, but the expression was so good that I had to use it. It gives the whole thing a weird lurching quality that I like.

Norman seems to be yelling "stop!" - or is it "stab"?

"Mother isn't quite herself today"

Mummified body of woman who died four YEARS ago is found in her hoarder daughter's home

· Josephine Pallone died aged 98 in her bed in September 2010

· Her daughter, Janet Pallone Delatorre, planned to bury her with husband

· But panicked at the state of her 'hoarder' house and left her in bed

· Police investigating to see if there are any signs of wrongdoing

By ALEX FINNIS FOR MAIL ONLINE

· PUBLISHED: 16:49 GMT, 14 August 2014 | UPDATED: 08:55 GMT, 15 August

The body of a woman whose daughter promised would be buried beside her late husband has been found four years later - mummified and decaying in her home in Gilbert, Arizona.

Janet Pallone Delatorre found her 98-year-old mother Josephine Pallone dead in her bed in September 2010, and told her son that she would be buried in Chicago.

But now her remains have been found still in that very same same bed, in what police have described as a rubbish-filled 'hoarder house' on Leah Lane.

The Gilbert, Arizona 'hoarder house', where Josephine Pallone's body has lay rotting for four years

A police report says: 'Janet stated she "panicked" and believed police would think Janet killed her based on the condition of the house. Janet assumed the police would think Janet neglected her and that is why she died.'

For this reason, she bizarrely decided to leave her mother where she had found her, and she remained there until police discovered her gripping an old blanket on June 28.

They said it was obvious that she had been dead for a very long time.

Police made the gruesome discovery because Ms Pallone Delatorre's ex-husband, William Delatorre, had gained control of the house through the courts, after she had fallen behind on payments.

Acting as a court commissioner, a real estate agent went into the house to find it in awful condition. Concerned, police searched the house to find it full of rubbish, with clothes stacked in piles in many of the rooms, and Mrs Pallone's remains in one of the bedrooms.

They also found a pet bird, which was in healthy, cared-for condition.

Ms Pallone Delatorre's son Nathan told police he had moved out of the house four years ago to go to university, and not long after had been told by his mother over the phone that his grandmother had died.

He said he had not been to the house since, but had been told that his mother's plan had been to bury Mrs Pallone next to her husband in Chicago.

Sgt. Jesse Sanger told AZCentral that the Maricopa County Medical Examiner's Office still has not officially identified the body, and the case is still an active death investigation.

But it is expected the body will soon be announced as Mrs Pallone's.

He added that there are currently no signs of fraud or any other criminal activity.

Police are also looking into the rough date of death, and also to see whether the body has suffered any broken bones or other damage.

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

What could possibly go wrong?

The Myanmar hot air balloon festival (complete with detonation of a few tons of fireworks) is a new low in jaw-dropping public danger. But it's fascinating to watch. I don't have any mortality statistics on this incredible event, but just watching it - thousands and thousands of people running away screaming as nuclear-intensity bombs go off and live cinders rain down out of the sky - is compelling in an awful sort of way.

Does this distract me from the awfulness that is going on in the world? You bet it does. I don't know what else to do.

Believe it or not, this is an example of a "successful" launch. Even that looks too hair-raising to contemplate.

And the botched ones ARE a lot more fun.

When hell explodes

The more I watch this video, the more disturbing it is.

This is a video of a horrendous accident in a fireworks factory in Denmark. What set it off was one careless slip by an employee who dropped a box of small firecrackers. There was no taking it back.

What's disturbing about it is - well, a lot of things are. It's the sense something is being destroyed before our eyes - something normally associated with joy and celebration. But that's not the half of it. All the fireworks seem to be going off crazily at once, in some sort of mad twisted version of those lovely, orderly, gorgeously-coloured displays we see at picnics in the park.

Every once in a while, there is a hideous white-hot explosion of unbelievable intensity, forming a kind of sickeningly-bright mushroom cloud. Then more chitter-chattering of insane fireworks, their direction lost. It's as if their usual symmetry and beauty has been horribly corrupted. They've gone insane.

I think one life was lost - I don't know much about it, and am almost afraid to find out. Originally I was going to post some video that fascinates me, from a celebration in Myanmar (formerly Burma). Every year they take a gigantic paper balloon, put an immense open torch under it, pack the basket with a heavy load of explosive fireworks, and send it aloft. Something awful seems to happen at this event every year, and the one I was watching earlier today was the worst. The balloon almost seemed to be making its way upward where, at some timed point, the fireworks were supposed to shoot up into the sky. Then it began to sink. Something was happening to the hot air, it was escaping, or the open flame was shooting out sideways, but for whatever reason the balloon landed on the ground and then decided to let go with an upside-down version of the (homemade) fireworks which rained down live cinders all over the spectators. This was followed by the inevitable nuclear-strength explosion, with scenes of panicked people running around in thick smoke with fire hoses gushing everywhere.

That's how they do it in Myanmar.

A little slideshow I made from some spectacular photos of this yearly human roast. How does anyone survive this event? Why is it legal?