Dial-up sound 700% slower (Creepy)

Visions of a Cold War Kid

When I was a kid, back in the 1960s, everything was The Future. I was constantly hearing about what life would be like "In The Year 2000".

It was a never-ending refrain: "By the year 2000, we'll" (all be walking around on the moon, have domed cities with climate control, zoom around in flying cars like on The Jetsons, have our living room rugs vacuumed by a robot).

And computers. Yes, computers were a definite menace. Every episode of The Twilight Zone had a computer in it, and man, they were EVIL. They always turned out to be the villain, the dark force behind every bad thing that had happened in that smudgy, surreal, black-and-white half-hour. 

It was almost as bad as Star Trek, where by the end of the show the evil computer would start to smoke and jibber as Captain Kirk managed to convince it to self-destruct in order to save the universe. Though why computers would have smoke coming out of them is anyone's guess. Call Bill Gates, something must've shorted out.

In this futuristic scenario, convenience and sterility meant everything. There was no food. Of course not! Food came in the form of pills. Green pill, vegetable. Red pill, meat. Etc. I used to brood in my morose child-way (for even then, as now, I was deeply depressive and fearful, though I told no one) about the demise of food. How food was, as my Dad used to say, "going out of style". No, actually, what he said was my brother Arthur was "eating like it was going out of style" when he attacked a giant stack of Aunt Jemimas. And I took it literally, that eating really WAS going out of style: something I could readily believe, with all that talk of pills. Soon one of my favorite activities, something I always thought I could depend on, would become obsolete.

I was a Cold War kid, though I had no idea there was ANY kind of war on, cold or otherwise. Walter Cronkite, who knew everything, often talked about something called The Iron Curtain, and I knew it was all the way over on the other side of the world, but I didn't know what it was.  I knew something about the Great Wall of China, and maybe even a little bit about the Berlin Wall, so all these things got conflated into a massive, completely solid, miles-thick curtain, a ramparts cutting across Russia and keeping all the Americans out, or the Russians in.

Communists were bad, but not as bad to us as they were to the Americans. We had a funny attitude towards the Americans then, though no funnier than it is now. We felt sorry for them, and we feared them slightly, though because Canadians always "stand on guard" (it's in our national anthem about 18 times), we held on to our values pretty securely. Americans were crazy: they were The Beverley Hillbillies, they were Dragnet, they were The Huntley-Brinkley Report. Though I knew a lot of people who cried when Kennedy got shot, at one point my mother told me quietly "he wasn't our President, you know," and it gave me a sense of perspective.

No one talked about this, but around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis (which I knew absolutely nothing about: only that I woke up screaming every night for weeks), the TV stations from Detroit would frequently do A Test of the Emergency Broadcasting System. "This is only a test." A logo would flash on the screen: Civil Defense, a name I found inexplicably terrifying. Then came this bone-penetrating sound: BOOOOOOOOP. When I posted a slowed-down version of an old computer dial-up modem, every hair on my body stood up because it reminded me of This Is Only A Test. I would freeze in place, go numb. I don't remember another person ever being in the room with me when this happened, and I told no one about it. I was sure that the world was about to end.

Fast-forward to the early 1990s, when - I swear this is true - I heard a very loud air raid siren outside. Yes! Just like in the movies when the bombers are swooping down on London during the Blitz. Droaaaannnnnnnn - that doomy sound. (You know what I'm talking about.) I phoned up my friend and babbled. I heard it, I heard it, I heard the siren. What siren? It sounded like an air raid siren from an old World War II movie. Oh - maybe they were just testing it out.

Oh.

I wonder now: as with the Emergency Broadcasting System, the sirens are there to be used, not just "things" or abstract concepts. It made me wonder - still does - if every city has air raid sirens or some mysterious way of alerting its citizens of certain doom. For some reason, what comes to mind is what my scientist husband told me about NASA. Before every prolonged space flight, each astronaut is given a cyanide capsule in case they get stuck out there and can't get back.

Growing up doomy leaves marks on you, it does. My joy is always darkened. Recently I had to take down a post that literally sent my very modest readership scattering for cover. Four longtime readers bailed in just a few hours. No kidding, they left. The only reason I could think of was what I had just posted. It truly was a sort of vision of how Armageddon might unfold. And it might. Although I realize we all have to live as if it won't.

Climate change, terrorism, the nuclear weapons we all seem to have forgotten all about - and human evil - the collapse of the power grid - and the other thing no one mentions any more (though it was discussed incessantly in the 1960s), OVERPOPULATION - these things could converge on a fragile, already-overburdened world. And I don't want it to happen, folks. Don't ever think that. But back in the '60s we bickered and fumed and wrung our hands about the planet being choked with humanity at two billion people, and - strangely, very strangely to me - we virtually never think, talk or write about it now that it has exceeded seven. 

It's lonely putting your work out there, where there is this unpredictable response, or even non-response, along with wildly uneven exposure. Once in  a while I go back into old posts, unable to find something, and I see that a post has gotten something like 10,000 views (one on footbinding in China, for example, or Carrie Fisher and her electroconvulsive therapy). The next post will get, like, 15 views. I've tried to figure it out. Someone told me to use more intriguing search terms, but what if it's a video with a cat and a rabbit? 

But I find I can't write "popular" or go by a formula. I write because I have to, because I don't feel whole without it. It is what I have always done to survive and to try to make sense of the world. This matters more to me than format - or it must, because everyone else's blog is now solid white with huge lettering, and mine isn't. Though I changed the name of it at one point because someone told me Margaret Gunning's House of Dreams was "embarrassing" (hey! Not to me! It was satire. It's awful when someone doesn't "get" satire and says YOU'RE the dummy), I haven't substantially updated the site since I started it, it's still in the old brown-paper-bag format that I find easy to use and "not plastic" (as we used to say in the '60s). 

Recurrent themes run through personal blogs like this whether you want them to or not. Certain obsessions pop up again and again. Blogs are supposed to have a theme, and this one doesn't, but is nevertheless (in view of my obsessiveness) always in danger of becoming repetitive. One definitely-recurring theme is paranoia and the end of the world, as previewed by the Emergency Broadcasting System tests that broke into my Quick Draw McGraw cartoons. BOOOOOOOOP. And sirens going off that aren't supposed to. Or maybe they're just testing them out.

Food being replaced by pills never took off as a concept. Not even close. No one could have predicted the current truly astonishing levels of obesity back when 250 pounds was considered grotesque and horribly unhealthy. Computers are ubiquitous and run everything, but if they're as evil as we thought they would be, no one notices any more. They HAVE taken over our lives, just as Rod Serling/Gene Roddenberry tried to warn us, but now we aren't afraid of them any more. We like it just fine.

If George Orwell were alive today - but he wouldn't be. I think he would have committed suicide at the developments in surveillance that are now completely standard. Like frogs in hot water, we not only don't notice we're being boiled, we kind of like the sensation of the heat.

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

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My Meowy Valentine: Victorian greeting card art

My funny Valentine

Sweet, comic Valentine

You make me smile with my heart

Your looks are laughable

Unphotographable

Yet you're my favorite work of art

Is your figure less than Greek?

Is your mouth a little weak?

When you open it to speak

Are you smart?

Don't change a hair for me

Not if you care for me

Stay little Valentine, stay

And each day will be Valentine's Day

Is your figure less than Greek?

Is your mouth a little weak?

When you open it to speak

Are you smart?

Don't, please don't change a hair for me

Not if, not if you care for me

Stay little valentine, stay

And each day will be Valentine's

Every day will be, every day will be Valentine's Day

  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

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"But it looked OK on paper!"

I promise, some day I WILL do a post on the Winchester Mystery House, which is full of such nonsensical/incomprehensible features as windows built into the floor and staircases that lead nowhere. Meanwhile, these are design fails, like this playground equipment for when you're babysitting a particularly poisonous little brat.

Just waiting for that major derailment!

"Oh, what a beautiful mor - " CLUNK.

I am trying to figure this out. Do you go UP this wheelchair ramp? Or do you go bumping down the stair part first, then - . And how would this work for strollers?

No doubt here - you have to love pain.

Great garage for a flying car, maybe like the one on The Jetsons. Is that their driveway, blocked by a fence, running at right angles to the house? As I look it it, though, it's plain the architect just put the garage on the wrong floor.

This staircase would've made Sarah Winchester proud. Or at least it would have made sense to her. Perhaps the designer went to a seance.

Now this is just wrong.

Little People, Big ATM?  Can't be a drive-through, unless you're lying on your belly on a giant skateboard.

I like this! I do! Trees deserve their own space on (or in) the property.

This one, though, I truly do not get.

  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

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Squid sex

These are so very beautiful! I stumbled upon them while trying to find information about the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California. Shows you how you can get side-tracked. Please note, I am merely borrowing these for a brief display and NOT taking credit for their creation. I can't find who made them because they are part of a research project on squid reproduction from Leland Stanford Junior University. Some kid had fun making these late at night! A couple of them aren't working very well, unfortunately. I have no idea how many kilobops these require to bop themselves into being. But sometimes they work, and the ones that do - they are pure art in motion.

Prostate Milking: Benefits And How To Do It Right

I swear to God, I DO NOT KNOW how I got on to this site! Just one of those one-thing-leads-to-another internet nightmares. I started off researching the Sarah Winchester Mansion in San Jose, California, which I have always wanted to visit, and ended up on a site which is all about prostate health.

But as with the George Gershwin bio from the Russian Culture site, the original post was obviously NOT written in English. It's impossible to determine if it was in Japanese, Spanish or Czech, but to me it sounds at least vaguely Asian.

I love literal/word-for-word translations and their charming lack of regard for English idiom. Instead we have sentences that go nowhere (sort of like those bizarre staircases at the Winchester Mystery House: see, there IS a connection!) and long strings of gorgeous idiotisms. So here it is, folks: how to do it right. Pencils ready?

How to Milk the Prostate Right

How to do it properly. It is very difficult as they may affect different diseases; some of them are very dangerous, such as prostate cancer, which is known as a great influence on a large male population. In lesions warning in May, trying to trade in the prostate, which should be on a regular basis to work as a treatment.

Maybe turn the word sounds strange to you. This means that a massage in this region, we say, and this can be done independently, without external assistance. Here’s how you do it correctly.

First, in the area must be mitigated.

Thus, to urinate or relax your intestines to eliminate the stress of the body.

It is important to keep nails short and trim, in order to avoid the failure of the delicate skin inside your rectum.

Hygiene is also very important. Wash your hands and body thoroughly.

To make things easier to put the latex sterile gloves on his hands, you will use for the prostate milking. In addition, some water-based lubricant, resulting in some of your fingers.

As a first step, slowly, introducing a finger or more into his anus. You must return, and then click to press a finger on the navel from the inside.

You know, when you raised the prostate, where you will feel your fingers are small, round, that the lamp has a size of a large walnut.

Now, when you find it, it starts slowly, massage with some waving people on both sides, and without pressing too hard on the central part of which is rich in nerve endings.

Do not scratch with nails.

You suddenly feel the need to PEE, even if you did not. This is only a feeling, it’s not, and you should continue your massage and ignore it.

After a short time in this region will be implemented so that orgasm can occur. It is not always true, but there are many chances that you are experiencing ejaculation. 

There is some evidence against him. Trade of the prostate can not be used by those who are already suffering from diseases of the prostate or acute prostates, which is an acute inflammation of the glandular tissue. The main reason to prevent trafficking in such cases is that when your foot massages can lead to the spread of infection, so be careful. 

And no no NO, I will not continue with this because it would just be more of the same! But I hope you've learned something useful about prostate health, illustrated by some wonderful gifs from Stanford Junior University. I think they're about squid.

  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

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But Joe has a hotshot lawyer: an analogy

Jim Hagarty

February 6 at 4:59pm ·

Ghomeshi

So Joe stole money from me. I know he stole it, he knows he stole it. But I keep talking to Joe when I see him because I know he will never pay me back. That's just the way he is, the way it is. I could hate Joe for the rest of my life, but that would hurt me, not him. I like him, basically, and decide to not leave cash lying around when I am with him. Life goes on. Nobody's perfect. Then I hear something disturbing. Joe's been stealing a lot of money from a lot of people. Some of those people were caused hardship by the loss of their money. Joe didn't care. Then Joe is charged. This is more serious than Joe stealing from me. He's hurt a lot of people and will carry on hurting them. Police come to me, having heard Joe stole from me. They ask me to co-operate in an investigation. I do. I long ago got over having lost a few bucks to Joe but if I stay quiet, I will be helping him to hurt others. I agree to testify. But Joe has a hotshot lawyer. And I am made a mess of in court. Didn't I keep hanging around with Joe even though he stole from me? Isn't it true that I joked with Joe that we should rob a bank? Isn't it true that I am free and careless with my money and have been known to blow some of it at the casino? Isn't it true that I once stole some coins from my brother's dresser when I was a kid? Isn't it true that I like to watch crime movies where the bad guy keeps getting away with robbing trains? Isn't it true that I overcharged a buyer on kijiji for an old printer I was selling, a printer that doesn't work very well? Isn't it true that I have been to a psychologist for counselling? Isn't it true that the Canada Revenue Agency questioned my 2013 return where I made a $570 "mistake" calculating my medical expenses? Other witnesses face the same grilling from the brilliant lawyer. Joe walks. But I don't want to see him any more. Nor his lawyer. Because I have been robbed by both of them now. And the justice system.

Note.  This was posted by one of my Facebook friends. I believe the story is a good analogy for what happened with Ghomeshi. The fact that his case was all twined around male-female inequity/power games and trampled sexual boundaries made it that much more murky and emotionally-charged, but even simplifying it to something much-less-fraught highlights the lunacy of the courtroom and its shallow grasp of the human condition. "Yes, but courtroom justice is the law of the land, and as imperfect as it is, it's all we have," people cry.  But "all we have" can CHANGE if we have the will to change it! If we don't and it never does, then it's a hopeless relic and will serve no one. Ever.