Turbo Snails and Mochi-knitting

There's some kind-of-a movie coming out about snails. Damned if I know anything about it, but I know my granddaughters, sweet little blue-eyed blondies with bouncy hair, LOVE snails and will probably go see it.

They love slithery, antennae-y, slime-trail-leaving snails, which they keep outside in the backyard in a sort of plastic box which serves as a snail ranch. Every so often Daddy shakes it out over the garden, and the snail-collecting starts all over again.

Snails this size are surprisingly easy to knit, though I had to refresh myself on the Magic Loop method which essentially knits a tube that doesn't require seaming. I could never knit on four needles to save my life.

The hardest part, of course, were the antennae, which had to be knitted as i-cords. It was only recently that I discovered this stands for "idiot cord". It's a way of getting around the four needles, I guess. There is snobbery and elitism in knitting as in everything else, and the four-needle, double-pointed crowd often looks down on those poor sods who only use two. Never mind, I just wanted to get the job done.

This is the original mega-snail I knitted for Erica, who must be 9 or 10 inches long. The pattern is out of a book of knitted amigurumi, but this one is atypical. Amigurumi are usually tiny, crocheted, and represent imaginary creatures. This one was honkin' huge and nearly impossible to knit. Surprisingly, the shell was relatively easy because it involved relentless decreases that pulled the tube into a curled ram's-horn shape.

The body, however. . . the instructions were woefully inadequate, only two pages, with NO illustrations. The patterns I frequently order on the net often run to twenty pages, with instructional photos on every page. So it's a wonder I completed this project at all. Having done the shell, however, I knew I couldn't stop, so I made up my own body which was more of a beanbag, stuffing it with plastic shot to give it stability. The plastic shot slowly leaked out of tiny holes in the body, however, necessitating a major repair job.


http://mochimochiland.com/2008/03/free-pattern-snails-and-slugs/

This is a link to the pattern on a charming site called Mochimochi Land. I approve, except I altered the pattern a bit (as I usually do), making the end of the snail shell a bit narrower (they're hard to curl under) and correcting a problem with the eyes.

Snails' eyes aren't placed the way they are here. They're on the ends of their icky, probing, viscous antennae.
The way the antennae look here, they're more like bunny ears. I made mine longer, with a bit of a blob on the ends so I could embroider on eyes.

The kids would never forgive me if these things were inaccurate.

(This doesn't look much like a real snail either. The movie I was talking about is called Turbo and it's about some sort of snail race. Actually, for their size, snails aren't slow. We've had the experience of looking at a snail in the back yard, going away for a few minutes, and coming back only to find it several feet away. All that determined slime-gliding must pay off.)

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My God. . . what's that in your pocket?

No, it's not the cute little green Geico Gecko with his Australian accent and ironic humour. It isn't the Aflac Duck, who seems to have broken a wing lately or something (but he only had one line anyway).

This is some sort of nightmarish mechanical squirrel that hands out pills.

Pink pills, Pepto-Dismal pills (as we used to call it). If they taste as sickish and paintlike as the original sickish pink liquid, then they'll make you throw up, which is one way I guess of relieving your stomach problems.

I heard once that during the war (and to my generation, The War meant only one thing) people used Pepto-Bismal as paint in a pinch, when nothing else was available. This tells me several things. One, that there must have been buckets of it lying around (why would it cost less than paint, or be more available?) Two, that there must have been a lot of sickish pink walls during the war. Three, that I think I'm going to be sick now.

And hey, waitaminute: the Pepto part I get, but Bismol? Does this stuff have bismuth in it? What the hell IS bismuth - isn't it radiactive, like Strontium 90? What's Strontium 90? Is that why it's pink?

(below. . . I hate to do this. . . I found out some facts about the bismuth, but could only post these few because I can't think about this any more.  I'm surprised this stuff hasn't been hauled off the market by the FDA.)

Dissolved Pills Mike Walker

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Most modern medicines are carefully synthesized organic molecules so potent that each pill contains only a few milligrams of the active ingredient. Pepto-Bismol is a fascinating exception, both because its active ingredient is bismuth, a heavy metal commonly used in shotgun pellets, and because there is a lot of it in each dose. So much, in fact, that I was able to extract a slug of bismuth metal from a pile of pink pills.

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Jesus was homeless. . . wasn't he?

'Survival' of United Church not a priority

(Blogger's note. I was a longtime, active member of the United Church until a sense of alienation drove me away a few years ago. The National Post article below (describing churches scrambling frantically to survive financial hardship) scored a direct hit. During my 15 years as a committed member, I saw churches trying to maintain cavernous old buildings, in dire debt because they couldn't make their mortgage payments. I saw them grabbing people practically as they walked in the door to join committees, shaming people if they couldn't or wouldn't tithe (often actively questioning their commitment if they felt their money was better spent giving directly to charities), and even driving away people who were contributing in a way that was outside the box. Such interlopers made everyone uneasy, as they seemed to be saying: look, guys, the old ways aren't working any more. What can we do that's new? 

So today I found this article online which was written SIX YEARS AGO. I wonder what has changed. Probably not much. Members are still probably sitting through endless annual meetings in which the main subject is financial doom and the reprehensible lack of members' commitment which has brought it about. I remember the gloomy, depressed feeling hanging over us as we left these meetings, shamed into believing we were letting our church down and even letting the United Church die because we didn't care.

Though everything in our culture has changed  so radically that it is practically unrecognizable, the United Church expects to go on operating in the same way it did in the 1950s. Why doesn't it work any more? Can you guess? But shame isn't the answer, nor is panic, scrambling to get the old ways back, or bitterness and gloom.

Ask yourself: how many churches did Jesus build? Only one, and it has no walls.)

By National Post October 13, 2007 

The leader of the United Church of Canada says his Church is too "preoccupied" with protecting its buildings, counting its money and recruiting members, and should instead devote its energies to helping the poor, the hungry and the sick beyond its walls.

Reverend David Giuliano, the Moderator, or spiritual head, of one of Canada's largest Protestant churches, has sent a letter to United Church congregations across the country, urging them to worry less about "buildings and budgets" and become more concerned about the "suffering of the world around us."

"Our hope is not for our survival or even growth," Rev. Giuliano writes. "I am praying that our preoccupation with getting people into church is transformed by a passion for getting the church out into the world.

"I am praying that we welcome strangers with a radical hospitality that sees in them the face of Christ -- not an 'identifiable giver' or a 'potential committee member.' "

Rev. Giuliano's plea comes in the midst of a difficult period for the Church and its roughly 600,000 members. Along with other mainstream Christian denominations, the United Church of Canada is experiencing a long decline in national membership; its congregational lists fell 39% between 1961 and 2001.

In July, the Church announced program cuts and layoffs at its national headquarters in Toronto due to financial pressures -- including the closure of its audiovisual production office and the cancellation of its award-winning current affairs television pro-gram Spirit Connection, which will air for the last time on Vision TV on Dec. 30.

In an interview this week Rev. Giuliano acknowledged, "There's a lot of anxiety in the Church about our institution --about money and numbers."

He said the Church, which once boasted more than a million active adherents, was for many generations a source of cultural and social authority in Protestant Canada.

"Many of us are reluctant to give up [that authority]--even if it doesn't really exist today --but I see the change as liberating, because we don't have to hold on to that any more."

"Jesus's followers were not a huge group of people, and they were not prosperous," he said.

"The measurement of a faithful community cannot be in its numbers."

Rev. Giuliano said that as one example of the Church's preoccupation with survival, too much money is spent maintaining Church buildings that serve little purpose other than to shelter a declining group of worshippers once a week.

"I think we have too much property," he said. "We have places where we have three United Churches within three blocks of each other."

He applauded one of the country's oldest congregations, First United Church in Ottawa, which sold its old building last year and now leases meeting and programming space from a nearby Anglican Church.

Rev. Giuliano likened the Church institution to a treasured car that a proud owner might keep in their driveway.

"The Church is a vehicle intended to get us somewhere. If you keep it fixed and washed and waxed but you don't ever take it anywhere, it doesn't have much purpose," he said.

"If what we do is ask the question, 'How do we get big or even survive,' I think we've lost our way," he said. "For me, the real question is, 'What does it mean to be faithful?' "

© (c) CanWest MediaWorks Publications Inc.

(Post-blog. I can hear the protests now. But it won't work. It won't work. Whether we like it or not, the world runs on money and it can't be any other way. End of discussion.

Show me ONE organization that has survived for more than a couple of years without significant financial support from its membership?

I have one, and it has many branches and exists in many forms. It was started in the 1930s because a doctor and a stockbroker couldn't stay sober. But together, with mutual insight and support, they found that they could. No one told them that survival without money was impossible, so they survived. They did more than survive: their tiny church of two became the most successful worldwide self-help organization in human history. And all this with no dues or fees, so that NO ONE would be excluded.

Maybe just a little bit closer to what Jesus had in mind.)

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Ever ridden in a pussyvan?

News

18 obsolete words which never should have gone out of style

By Carmel Lobello 135 days ago

Just like facts and flies, English words have life-spans. Some are thousands of years old, from before English officially existed, others change, or are replaced or get ditched entirely.
Here are 18 uncommon or obsolete words that we think may have died early. We found them in two places: a book called “The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten” by Jeffrey Kacirk, and on a blog called Obsolete Word of The Day that’s been out of service since 2010. Both are fantastic— you should check them out.

Snoutfair: A person with a handsome countenance — “The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten” by Jeffrey Kacirk

Pussyvan: A flurry, temper — “The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten” by Jeffrey Kacirk

Wonder-wench: A sweetheart — “The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten” by Jeffrey Kacirk

Lunting: Walking while smoking a pipe — John Mactaggart’s “Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia,” 1824

California widow: A married woman whose husband is away from her for any extended period — John Farmer’s “Americanisms Old and New”, 1889

Groak: To silently watch someone while they are eating, hoping to be invited to join them – www.ObsoleteWord.Blogspot.com

Jirble: To pour out (a liquid) with an unsteady hand: as, he jirbles out a dram — www.Wordnik.com

Curglaff: The shock felt in bathing when one first plunges into the cold water — John Jamieson’s Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808

Spermologer: A picker-up of trivia, of current news, a gossip monger, what we would today call a columnist — “The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten” by Jeffrey Kacirk

Tyromancy: Divining by the coagulation of cheese — “The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten” by Jeffrey Kacirk

Beef-witted: Having an inactive brain, thought to be from eating too much beef. — John Phin’s “Shakespeare Cyclopaedia and Glossary”, 1902

Queerplungers: Cheats who throw themselves into the water in order that they may be taken up by their accomplices, who carry them to one of the houses appointed by the Humane Society for the recovery of drowned persons, where they are rewarded by the society with a guinea each, and the supposed drowned person, pretending he was driven to that extremity by great necessity, is also frequently sent away with a contribution in his pocket. — “The Word Museum: The Most Remarkable English Words Ever Forgotten” by Jeffrey Kacirk

Englishable: That which may be rendered into English — John Ogilvie’s “Comprehensive English Dictionary”, 1865

Resistentialism: The seemingly spiteful behavior shown by inanimate objects — www.ObsoleteWord.Blogspot.com

Bookwright: A writer of books; an author; a term of slight contempt — Daniel Lyons’s “Dictionary of the English Language”, 1897

Soda-squirt: One who works at a soda fountain in New Mexico — Elsie Warnock’s “Dialect Speech in California and New Mexico”, 1919

With squirrel: Pregnant — Vance Randolph’s “Down in the Holler: A Gallery of Ozark Folk Speech”, 1953

Zafty: A person very easily imposed upon — Maj. B. Lowsley’s “A Glossary of Berkshire Words and Phrases”, 1888

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THE FLY: a cautionary tale

And so. . . good night.

Never trust a clown with a social disease

His Satanic Majesty, the Milkster, is back. All it took is one mis-reference in my last post (i. e. the title of a Harold Lloyd movie, The Milky Way) to trip off the awful synapses, releasing the nightmare miasma of my Milky memories.

Though Milky never actually inspired a suicide cult, he could have. You could just as easily put cyanide in Twin Pines milk, couldn't you? Actually, it might even be more pleasant to take. And there's something else about Twin Pines. . . 

IT'S MAGIC.

No one has figured out yet just HOW secretions from a cow's udder could have this sort of paranormal power.  No one has figured out yet, either, why anyone would have kept a festering old milk carton from 1962 which obviously has mold growing on the top. 

I have no idea what this is or how it got here. It just appeared like boils from a plague. It could be a very, very stained old tshirt, but why leave us hanging with such a motto? "Milky" Says - WHAT?? Maybe you turned the shirt over and it said "blow me".

I always suspected Milky had superior mathematical skills, and now I know it. Just look at this fraction here, it's unbelievable, isn't it? Never mind that it looks like his mother made that suit out of an old bedsheet. He was on a different system from all the rest of us.The system of clowns whose  brains had been eaten away by social diseases contracted during their low-budget Shrine Circus days. The system of hot dirty canvas and heaving sawdust and straining ropes. The stench of animal dung and the screams of little children.

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Harold on my mind (again!)

                                                                  Girls. . .

Girls-girls. . .

GIRLS - GIRLS - GIRLS!!

Harold always liked to up the ante. For him, more was always better. I think these shots are from one of his early talkies, The Milky Way, in which he plays a milkman who is accidentally catapulted to fame as a prizefighter. How he ends up with all these dames we'll never know, but he sure looks happy.

Harold loved women - he made no secret of it, and liked to photograph them - nude - in 3D.  If I had the guts I'd post some of his nude shots of pinup girls like Bettie Page. The family isn't trying to hide any of this, as they put out a coffee-table-type book of his 3D Nudes a decade or so ago. The poses are spectacularly hokey, early Playboy with a touch of surrealism. The book comes with hokey 3D spectacles that don't work very well. Actually, MY copy, which I bought used from Amazon, didn't have the spectacles and I had to use the ones that came with the DVD boxed set, The Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection.

I think I've posted this before, but I have a feeling no one reads this stuff every single day of their lives and thus MIGHT have missed it. I couldn't help but see a certain eerie similarity between these two photos.

Very early Woody Allen does bear a kind of resemblance to Lloyd, without the physical feats (though apparently Woody Allen was  a talented ball player who played down his athletic prowess because it didn't fit his nerdy image). He's hapless and misunderstood, but somehow or other by the end of the picture, he always gets the girl.

By the way, Woody Allen was for some reason not interested in getting involved in the biopic which will be adapted from The Glass Character. I'll just have to go to Marty or Clint (or Ronnie or Steve).

These are Lloyd candid shots. This is what he did between takes or while waiting for his girl friend. He was a sly devil and to me, always looked a bit seductive.

Making up for The Kid Brother, a tender, lyrical movie that is in my top six Lloyd favorites. The reissued movie has a score by Carl Davis that makes me cry.

Harold was a non-drinker who ran to ice cream floats. There was something of the earnest Midwestern boy in him that was endearing, though it did include a petulant temper. Last night I watched Kevin Brownlow's documentary The Third Genius (again!) and was charmed by the way his Nebraskan accent popped out in certain places. "Forehead" came out something like "foah-hayyd". In Movie Crazy, I remember him exclaiming, "The stock market crayyshed!"

OK, so I lied - I'm going to post some of the nude shots! These are almost decorous by today's standards, and the frontal shots never show much below the waist. The women look to me like skin sculptures, or maybe a 12-year-old boy's vision of what a nude woman might look like. He liked some meat on his women, which is commendable. Today's 6-foot-tall, stick-thin models probably wouldn't interest him.

Yes, yes, I told you they were weird! Maybe all those buckles did it for him, who knows.

Uhhhhh. . .

It must have taken him quite a lot of effort to get that spider on the wall.

(POST-POST: I just had the most evil thought about The Milky Way. It sounds like the title for Milky the Clown's  memoirs, or perhaps a religion where thousands of devotees in clown suits drink poisoned Twin Pines milk and die in a heap.)

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