I am your worst nightmare

The car with the anime eyes (animation)

Was fooling around with images of old cars - one of my obsessions - when I found the 1954 Buick Skylark, an automobile which made me sigh. I am working forwards in my car passions, starting with the1920s, then '30s, then. . . I am all the way up to the 1950s now, with only half a dozen decades of catching up to do.

I started thinking about how odd the big headlights looked, reminding me of the huge, luminescent eyes of anime figures. So I had to try it out. What do I know about anime? Watching Astroboy when I was a kid, I guess, though back then I didn't even know it was Japanese. Astroboy was way ahead of his time.

EXCLUSIVE: Christine Brown from Sister Wives explains her singing!

Bentley on the kitchen counter

Sometimes all you wanna do is post a cat video. Everything else seems futile. I have given up. I suppose I am happier now that I have given up. This flies in the face of everything I have ever been taught. Be an activist! BE the change you want to see in the world. But my attempts to do this brought me nothing but misery, futility, and screaming abuse from those who did not agree with me, who were always vastly in the majority. 

Bentley knows how to do it, to be the way the world ought to be, right now, and always has. As for me, as for me - I am getting older now, and I am tired of falling on my sword. Very, very rarely do I reach more than a handful of people, and this is true of my entire writing life. Looking back, it's beyond disheartening, and can even be downright depressing.

Haven't I worked harder than just about anybody I know? Yes. I poured my entire being into my work for decades. I gave it all my hope. Was I a "success" in CanLit terms? Not even remotely. I let down three different publishers, with three different books that nobody read. 

But just look at what CanLit has become. Perhaps I was protected all the time by some invisible angel.

So I have learned not to get too upset about anything, because who's going to notice it anyway? There's enough noise in the world. Too many voices, too much yelling. The world wants to go in a certain direction, perhaps moving towards some kind of clarity, and I can see that. But right now it isn't happening, and increasing awareness only leads to increasing alarm.

I do care increasingly about the world my grandkids will live in, and I honestly do not know what is going to happen there. But for that reason, I refuse to doomsay, no matter how lousy I feel. I try not to think the worst. I birdwatch. I walk. I hold my cat. 

Bock, bock, bock!

This will probably lack sound track unless you watch it full-screen, so let me fill it in for you:

Bocck, bock, bock, bock, bock, bock

Sound of tiny avian feet crunching in snow

CLUCK!

Bock, bock, bock -

When did clowns get creepy?

When I was a kid, there was no such thing as a creepy clown. ALL clowns were good, ALL clowns were funny, and they provided unquestioningly wholesome entertainment, not to mention big bucks for advertisers. When we look back at them now, we're incredulous. Just seeing Ronald McDonald in his first incarnation with the cardboard box on his head to demonstrate the Happy Meal is pretty macabre. Clarabell, the beloved clown of Howdy Doody (in itself pretty macabre), now looks like something you wouldn't want to face in your darkest nightmares. Milky I've dealt with, or at least I think so, until he comes seeping back into my post-traumatic consciousness like some eerie Renaissance shade. 

The whole concept of a creepy clown is relatively  recent, but now that we've put on those glasses of perception, suddenly they ALL look creepy. John Wayne Gacy has nothing on these guys. Stephen King has been blamed for it, but the awareness started a long time before that. You don't need to creep them up or make them look evil. They're ALL evil, as far as I am concerned, and the farther back you go, the more horrendously creepy they are.

So I just had to make a gif compilation from my vast file. When something is this bad, it somehow morphs into its opposite and becomes sublime.

Christ, that's funny!: Portraits of the Laughing Jesus

From what we know of Jesus - which, from a historical perspective, isn't very much - he doesn't seem to have been a real good-time sort of guy. In spite of all those references to turning water into wine, officiating at weddings, last suppers and the like, and even if people claimed he DID get a little tipsy from doing so, wisecracks and one-liners do not abound in his many familiar sayings.

THIS was the Jesus I grew up with, and if ever a sobersides existed, he was it. He had this long, sombre, Anglo-Saxon face, a receding hairline, and the high forehead of aristocracy. Not exactly a laugh riot.  The only quizzical line of his that  I can think of is the camel through the eye of the needle (or was that a needle through the eye of a camel? Poor camel!), and that line about, "You see the speck in your neighbor's eye, but not the great log in your own eye." Maybe you had to be there.

We want to know what Jesus looked like. We're curious. Even non-Christians want to know. Even people like me - and in spite of years of uneasy association with the church, I now believe Jesus was a composite, the teachings and sayings and saving deeds of many itinerant prophets rolled into one - want to know. Unconventional takes are welcome, even the above, rather smarmy pose, which probably shows up more often than any of the others, and in more guises.

Sunset orange.

Pastel blue.

And this one, an obvious corruption.

I don't know why it is, but artists have a hard time portraying Jesus as a - what? A real man, or is that too homophobic? What I'm trying to say is, Jeez! He looks like someone competing in America's Got Talent or something, telling us all that his Mom ("Hi, Mom! You're my inspiration!") is completely OK with his "awesome" lifestyle. Even the hairstyle is a little too Vidal Sassoon for my liking.

But this one is just plain disrespecful. Yes! - I believe that Jesus, if there really was a Jesus, likely laughed, because practically everyone who isn't brain-damaged laughs. But like THIS? The look in his eyes is wicked - demonic. He looks to be hatching some sort of evil plot. I don't know what puts these ideas into people's heads. You'd think, if you'd go to the trouble of painting or drawing a Laughing Jesus, there'd be a little more benevolence involved. To quote a Hindu guy I know: "Holy cow."

But it gets worse! Yes - this really is supposed to be Jesus - laughing. They sure had purty teeth all those thousands of years ago.

Does he have to look like this? In all of them? Or am I thinking in stereotypes again? Raymond Burr was gay. Rock Hudson. Gomer Pyle! None of them looked like this. "Wheeeeeeeeeee!"

Howling, but more in pain than laughter.

This one, for some reason, reminds me of a picture I saw in an anthropology text that depicted an australopithecine, humanity's distant ancestor. 

Once in a while, though, I find a depiction that just sort of appeals to me. This may look nothing like the "real" Jesus, the one who may or may not have existed. But it's a nice picture. He looks just Middle Eastern enough to defy the washed-out Sunday School stereotype, without being an out-and-out Neanderthal. He's - well, he's gorgeous is what he is! Just a hint of androgyny, enough to be cool without the salon look. I think I would welcome him as my personal Saviour - if he, and I, were so inclined.

P. S. (the "kicker"): Been looking for this one for years! Though there are those who believe I am nuts, I am an avid Blingophile. I love making Blingees, as they are my only real shot at visual art, and this one, sentimental though it may be, is quite beautiful. The subtlety of the animation is quite pleasing to me. It took a reverse-search through my TinEye program to find a true animated version, as I only had a jpg on hand from a post a lo-o-o-o-o-ong time ago. By the way, my search yielded 122 results. And as I look at it now, the reflection seems almost feminine, like the face of Mary. Jesus could always depend on his Mom. 

I was quite intrigued to find, upon researching the paintings of Greg Olsen (who did the Christ image at the end of my Laughing Jesus display), that he also did the face of the Blingee I like. Some of his imagery is kind of cool, bringing contemporary figures into a Biblical setting. I wish my old white vinyl-covered Bible with the zipper on it had had pictures in it by THIS guy - I might have paid more attention in Sunday School.

Another, more secular Olsen painting. I think it's quite charming and well-composed, and I like the quality of the light. I also like what it's saying: I have a couple of granddaughters like this, whose fashion sense ranges from tutus and ballet shoes to beat-up jeans. And there's not a princess in sight.

  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

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

 

Kitty shows me his butt!

When a cat shows you his butt, it's supposed to be an honour (kind of like dropping a dead bird at your feet). Here, Bentley takes it a little too far with the head-butts, flinging himself at me in a way which is highly unusual for him. He can be a tad aloof and will not receive affection unless he is in the mood. In other words, he is a cat.

This video is a tad dark, but I'm using the YouTube editing program which is a bit primitive. If you lighten things up too much, they turn orange and pixilated. 

The last time Bentley did something like this was at the vet's. He stood there on the table and rammed his head under my arm like an ostrich. He has limits. Boarding him while we went to Hawaii was downright traumatic, and he barely ate (and wouldn't even drink, being incredibly stubborn). I guess here he has forgiven me at last. 

Worst dance I've ever seen

This is a terrible dance number, not only for its inane and monotonous tune (if you could call it that) but for the dreadful camera work, which keeps focusing on the young women's chests. 

I was surprised to find there are at least a dozen versions of Pop Corn (or Popcorn, as it is sometimes known) by different "pop" groups in Europe. But this is the one that caught on. It's been called the first electronic pop song, but that discounts Dick Hyman's Moog, a classic album which I still listen to because I like how unsophisticated the electronic effects are. There is still a sense of discovery, whereas now that vein has been mined and is completely empty.

Back then, it was common to depict the Masters of Moog sitting in front of consoles that looked exactly like telephone switchboards from the 1930s. I'm not sure how they did it, but right now I don't care much because this thing is staring me in the face and I'm just about done with it. I couldn't even watch all of the video. I guess it's a period piece.

Meantime, this might be my favorite pop dance number (until I think of another one). Me and the blondie grandgirls used to dance to this, until they really began to dance and realized Nanny couldn't do it. It still kicks ass, in my books.

The beauty of obsolete language

I can never quite believe these words ever existed, but if they're in PopSugar, it must be true. I think the coming generation probably will receive all or most of its education from such sites. But is it any worse than the crap WE learned in school? No less dull, certainly. These words are not going to find their way back into common useage any time soon. They are crowded out by the acronyms that I encounter daily, and CANNOT figure out, making me feel about as obsolete as these creaky archaic terms. I'd do a post on them, but they're too depressing.

Flying kitten picture!

Imagine the horror: Civil Defense puppets

I don't know where these eerie civil defense short films were shown: probably on TV, though they're specifically geared towards a rural audience. I don't know why a rural audience would be particularly susceptible to nuclear holocaust warnings dramatized by the most hideous marionettes ever created. Perhaps the marionette cow would make more sense to them than this dead-faced, thread-trailing farmer from hell. These spots would no doubt be extremely cheap to make, as the set and main character (nameless, almost faceless) are laughably primitive. And yet. The message was being sent out daily, and I remember it. These were supposedly from 1965, which seems late for such a ludicrous production. I was eleven years old.

Did you ever have a crumb of memory - a corona, just the edge - a whisper, some fragment of a whole - and find that it led all the way back to your early childhood? My childhood was full of terror, for some reason, although the big reason was the Iron Curtain and Walter Cronkite and Civil Defense announcements ("This is only a test") and that godawful BOOOOOOOOOOP that seemed to go on forever. 

I've been thinking lately about the Emergency Broadcasting System. IS there such a thing, and if there ever were an emergency, an earthquake or a - God, we won't say it! - would it really kick in? How COULD it kick in, if there was no electricity and everyone were buried under rubble? Is it one of those things created just to give us the illusion of security?

And how would we find it? What frequency on the radio, what channel on the TV, what app (for surely the Emergency Broadcasting System has an app)? Maybe, as in a dream I had once, it would just start playing on ALL the channels, ALL the time, all over the world.

Hi, folks. It's the end of the world. Nice knowing you.

I must have been really small when I became terrified of certain ads. I didn't understand them. One of them seemed to be about poison ivy and how you could die from it. It was one of those smudgy, dreamlike, black-and-white animated things, the characters made up of sticks and circles, and it had a child (who had already been sternly warned!)getting mixed up with poison ivy - or was it something else? Radioactive material? - then growing sick, and sicker, then lying in bed, then lying in a grave with a mound and a cross on top. And x's for eyes.

I was terrified of this thing.

Another one - I may have been all of three years old, certainly no older than four - showed a man behind prison bars, clasping the bars in his hands and sort of slowly sliding down them with a horrible sagging expression, as if he was melting. Terrified me. I now put some pieces together and realize it may have been about drunk driving. But that is the adult me, jumping in with an interpretation. I really don't know.

This one really scared me, and I had no idea what it meant: a TV announcer was reading the news in a crisp, authoritative voice. Suddenly from the right-hand side of the screen, a man with his face obscured jumped out and clapped his hand over the announcer's mouth. He tried frantically to keep talking but couldn't make a sound. I had no idea  what had happened, why it had happened, and I had no power to ask.

Again, my adult mind jumps in now and fills in the pieces. This was likely another Cold War drama depicting the gagging and muzzling of freedom of speech by the insidious forces of Communism. Of course! It's creepy, a creepy way of illustrating it, but I am fairly certain now that's what it was. 

Now that I see it, though, the man in jail may also have lost his precious freedom due to the forces of Communism. This was the McCarthy era. Drunk driving was standard, along with smoking. So it's a safe bet that ALL these ads or dramas or announcements, or whatever they were, were actually about Cold War terrors and the threat of ideological suffocation, loss of freedom and ultimate annihilation.

So THAT'S all it was? 

Bad wedding

A terrified woman marries a murderer.

Won't you spread your tail

I never expected to hear this again. It was on Captain Kangaroo back in about 1962. My brother and I made relentless fun of it, singing it over and over. What it is, is Mr. Green Jeans trying to get the resident peacock (it was white, as I recall) to spread its tail by singing this ridiculous song. Someone (oh, who knows who?) used it as the sound track for a clip from an old exercise show, and it ended up on one of those "1950s TV blooper reel" things. 

Sunset through a fence in Port Coquitlam

We so seldom get a red sunset where we live, I had to go racing out to the back yard to try to capture this one. It wasn't easy. Our whole neighborhood is densely treed, which I love, but which gets in the way of natural phenomena. I was also shooting through the wooden lattice of the back fence. 

One evening I trotted all over the neighborhood looking for a harvest moon. I wasn't even sure what I was looking for, but I sure didn't find it, and felt like an idiot. At one point I was sure I had found it and went racing toward it with a camera, only to find it was a street light. And don't get me started on the eclipse (though that was my fault, not the sun's).

This is a pretty long video for me. Originally it had a lot of jabbering in the background, but I substituted music. For the most part it's unedited, so there are dark stretches. In fact, I appear in parts of it, but am apparently invisible. At the end I was trying to show how we have green grass all year round here, but I'm not sure it showed up. At any rate, this was pinker and lasted longer than any sunset I can remember around here.

Maui meows and birds on twitter

I captured some video here (around the 2:30 mark) which gives you an idea of the Maui lovebird "problem" - an invasive, non-native bird species capable of wreaking havoc on the environment, which is also cute as a green-feathered, peach-faced button. I adore birds and have made a hobby of observing them (one of the benefits of slowing down in retirement - it's hard for me to believe now that they were there all the time, right in my back yard, and I was oblivious to them.) These guys captivated me because they, unexpectedly, seemed attracted to me, but it was a love-hate thing. A meowing cat on the ground below the lanai added some excitement, though the birds were smart enough to keep well out of its way. 

One little guy kept coming around - I could tell it was him because he looked like he had an injury under his beak - scolding and blatting at me, then suddenly falling asleep in that adorable puffy, winky-eyed bird way. I kept wondering where this strange ragtag flock had come from, and why some of them were obvious hybrids or mutations - colors that would never result from random wild breeding. Were people just opening the cage door, or what? 

This may be our last vacation, which is why I'm posting so much on it. I've had to make the best of it. I am not a natural globe-trotter, we have very little money, and my health, while better than it was 15 years ago, is maintained with the benefit of multiple prescriptions. If I ever got separated from them for any length of time, I am not sure what would happen. Time zone shifts I can't handle (though it only bothered me this time after I got home and had to do Christmas). My mate's knees are awful, and he hates planes. So I am left to make the best of this one last glorious holiday. 

Wild Lovebirds of Maui: the rest of the story

It’s a Love Hate Relationship when it comes to lovebirds

SEP 8, 2013

The wild lovebird population in South and East Maui has “gotten out of control” in the last couple of years, according to wildlife officials and conservationists.

“They (lovebirds) are loud and cheery to some, shrill and awful to others,” state wildlife biologist and bird specialist Fern Duvall said. “There are people who love to see them and feed them, but others are losing mangos, papayas and fruits of all kinds to these birds.”

Additionally, Duvall said, the little parrots chew into homes and bore holes under and along the eaves, which may destroy the integrity of a house.

The largest known lovebird population is in the Wailea-Makena area, where a recent study by the Maui Invasive Species Committee counted “well over 100 free-flying lovebirds.” Many perch in the Maui Meadows area.

“When I do see them (lovebirds), it’s a pleasant thing to see, they give the place a tropical jungle feel,” said Drew Huey, who has lived in Maui Meadows for the past 10 years. He said that he started noticing significantly more wild lovebirds within the past year, with flocks of at least 15 birds usually perched in trees during morning hours.

“They don’t bother me, but I could see that if they were eating all my fruits, I’m probably not going to love the lovebirds as much,” Huey said.

The rate at which the wild lovebird population has grown is “definitely alarming” to some local habitat conservationists.

“A lot of times what happens with an invasive species (like the lovebird) is that they start out as a nuisance, and then all of a sudden you get this population explosion, and it hits a threshold where suddenly people are really aware of the problem and you end up with a situation where it may be beyond control,” said Maui Invasive Species Committee Manager Teya Penniman.

She added that while the South Maui colony may be a nuisance for residents living in the area, it is a colony in the tropical forests of East Maui – around Nahiku – that is most alarming.

“Parrot species in the wild can damage fruits of native plants, which are already under tremendous pressure as it is,” Penniman said.

Because Nahiku is in a more remote and unpopulated area, conservationists have not been able to secure an estimate of how many wild lovebirds are nesting in East Maui.

The little birds were originally brought to Hawaii from Africa as domestic pets, but eventually may have escaped their cages or owners may have set them free intentionally, not realizing detrimental effects to the environment, Duvall said. Because Maui’s tropical climate and abundance of fruit are reminiscent of their homeland, it is easy for lovebirds to survive and breed in the wild.

“I remember seeing a special on TV about the Mitred conures in East Maui, so I know they (non-native birds in the wild) can become a pest,” said John Guard, who owns The Pet Shop in Kahului.

A few years ago, a large colony of Mitred conures (a large parrot species native to South America) in Haiku threatened to displace native seabirds and spread invasive plant seeds. Efforts to remove the invasive parrots have been ongoing, Penniman said.

The Maui Pet Shop sells, on average, six to eight lovebirds every month and carries a handful of varieties, including petrie, black-mas
ked and blue-masked lovebirds. Each bird is priced between $50 and $100.

“They’re a highly intelligent bird, very noisy and destructive, but they can also be very charming and generally cute,” Guard said.

Because community feelings toward the birds are so conflicted, it is hard to set any plan of action at this point, wildlife officials said.

“We have no plans to take any kind of control action,” Penniman said. “Our plate is quite full and 
we don’t have the staff or the resources to take on something like this (especially when) there are divergent opinions about them (wild lovebirds).”

If the population did continue to grow to a point where the birds posed an immediate threat to their surrounding environment, there are options other than capturing and destroying the birds.

The ideal and most humane solution, Penniman said, would be to facilitate an aviary for the lovebirds, but the committee currently lacks the means to start one.

Individuals who wish to report a wild lovebird problem may request a wildlife control permit by calling the Maui Invasive Species Committee at 573-6472.

* Eileen Chao can be reached at echao@mauinews.com.

Wild lovebirds of Maui

I was astonished, though maybe I shouldn't have been, to see flocks of wild lovebirds on Maui, screeching and dive-bombing and doing all the things lovebirds do. I had two of them, you see - the second one died before I could even get to know her, and it broke my heart (though as a result, we ended up with a cat who is my dear companion and familiar). When I got home I looked it up (I don't have a phone attached to my arm/brain, unlike 95% of the human race), and apparently these are former pets who escaped, were abandoned, or got loose during tropical storms. A lot of people keep open-air aviaries in Hawaii, so such a thing is quite possible. Lovebirds, like most birds, are survivors and quickly find their niche. With year-round warm weather, food aplenty, no natural enemies, and lots of nooks for nesting (mostly under the eves of tourist condos), they're thriving and multiplying like mad.

This has caused problems: their screeching is not particularly pleasing, unlike the exotic jungle calls that fascinate tourists. What I noticed is that they're not quite wild: if I whistled or chirped, they would approach, shrieking irritably, and sometimes they sat on the railing of the lanai observing me. There was an air conditioner nearby, and they'd sit on it and scold me from a safe distance. The guano these things produce is prodigious, one of the reasons the locals don't like them. It splatters all over the place, down walls, on sidewalks, hardens like cement. But as with the burgeoning wild chicken population, animal lovers won't allow a cull, and you can't live-trap these babies, believe me - they move like peach-and-green lightning. 

So, unexpectedly, I had many lovebird encounters while on holiday, and captured some of it on video. In particular I noticed a pearl-grey specimen which could only have been bred in captivity. It's a mutation that wouldn't happen in the wild. That bird must have a story.