Woman Struck by lightning speaks!

The most bizarre video I have ever seen (no, I mean it)

God save me from this video (one of the worst I've ever seen). It's from a ghastly, creepy kids' show of the 1950s called Andy's Gang. I'm going to be posting more about this show - if I can stand it (must. . . write. . . post. . . ). It involves a truly shameful form of animal abuse which people found quite amusing back then. Those who have carefully analyzed this few minutes of film (and I've studied it as minutely as if it were the Zapruder footage) believe that the hamster actually dies at the 1:05 point.

Sweet surprises!

Some of my favorite Lucky Charms commercials from the 1960s. I especially like the fact that the "rainbow" colours all come out in shades of grey. This reminds me of Dorothy stepping into Oz. None of us knew that the picture turned to colour at this point, because none of us had SEEN it in colour. So he has to describe the colours to us. 

Lucky Charms has steadily escalated the number of marshmallow bits over the years, until the "cereal" is now nothing but a bowl of chemicals. North Americans are puzzled, with big question marks appearing above their stupid heads, as to "why" their children are so obese. How can they become obese from a cereal that's "magically delicious"? In recent years the leprechaun has become insufferable, speaking in an obviously phony Irish accent (I mean, even more phony than this one) while he rolls out the "new" marshmallow shape/flavour. The last one was in the shape of a silver Porsche.

We could have been friends

Demon Possessed Singing Trout

                Demon possessed singing trout.

BAD KITTY!

One of the weirdest things I've ever seen

  .


Ice shove - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_shove

An ice shove, ice surge, ice heave, ivu, or shoreline ice pileup is a surge of ice from an ocean or large lake onto the shore. Ice shoves are caused by ocean currents, strong winds, or temperature differences pushing ice onto the shore, creating piles up to 12 metres (40 feet) high.

"Ivu" sounds like some legendary creature like the Yeti or Abominable Snowman. Abominable Ice Shove?

Anyway, I've never seen anything quite like this. It was reassuring - somewhat - that this is actually a "thing" and not some freakish nightmare driven by climate change. As per usual, this video (a couple of years old now) was passed around without any explanation. The tinkling crystal-chandelier sound has an undertone of relentless chugging, like an awful ice train. That part of it I don't understand, at all. It still looks like some supernatural event to me, like a glacier somehow sped up about a million times.

Blogger's annoyed post-script. I can't find a thing on "ivu" except in that Wikipedia piece. Wikipedia defines it very strangely:

Ivu

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ivu or IVU may refer to:

Ice shove (Inupiat terminology is Ivu), a surge of ice from large bodies of water onto the shore
Impuesto sobre Ventas y Uso, the Puerto Rican sales and use tax
International Vegetarian Union, a non-profit organisation promoting vegetarianism
Intravenous urogram, a procedure to examine the urinary system
Ivu or Eve, a character from the manga Black Cat

It isn't even a REAL black cat, but a person, and nowhere is she called Ivu. I give up.

You ARE in the chair.

Broken hurricane siren: the sound of doom

Growing up, I had a constant sense of doom. Maybe it was from being a Cold War kid and having nothing explained to me. In this doomy era of Trump, many of those feelings are back.

I swear to God, it must have been 20 years ago, I was sitting at home minding my own business when I heard the end-of-the-world sound of an air-raid siren. I couldn't even take it in. Nobody could explain it to me - in fact, nobody else had even heard it. It was the story of my life.

Later I asked a friend about it, and he said, "Maybe they were just testing it out."

For what? I never found out.

Chew your little troubles away

TIPS to Housewives!

Latest Flavor-Hit in Soup

Made with Peanut Butter - nourishing, economical, easy to do

1/2 c peanut butter
2 c. milk
1 c. boiling water
1/2 tsp. onion juice
1 tsp. salt, dash pepper, paprika

Heat peanut butter in top of double boiler and gradually stir in boiling water, mixing thoroughly. Add milk and seasoning. Cook over water for 15 min. . . . For thicker soup add 1 to 2 tbs. flour first made into smooth paste with 2 tbs. cold water and stir into soup; stir and cook 10 min. more. Serves 4. Top with whipped cream, peanuts or chopped bacon, or serve it plain.

Blogger's note. At first I had the horrible thought that this peanut butter soup had Wrigley's Spearmint Gum in it. It's bad enough as it is. Peanut butter IS sometimes used as an ingredient in cooking, but here it's just - wrong. I mean, two cups of milk and one cup of boiling water? That's THREE cups of liquid added to a mere half-cup of peanut butter. It's just not going to work. Fifteen minutes of cooking isn't going to make this into soup, and even adding flour paste (the kind we used to stick paper together) won't make it thick enough to resemble soup. The whipped cream garnish strikes me as pretty bizarre, and the bacon - it's just a waste of bacon.

Is this a wartime/rationing recipe, do you think? There used to be a kind of "soup" in England during the war called Brown Windsor, made of gravy powder and water. Let us give thanks that, at least in this small details, things have gotten better.

Another Blogger's Note. I did find a number of recipes using peanut butter. I won't give the full recipe for this one (African Peanut Chicken Stew) because the page has asked me not to, but I could certainly go for it:

        
2-3 pounds chicken legs, thighs and/or wings
3 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 large yellow or white onion, sliced
A 3-inch piece of ginger, peeled and minced
6-8 garlic cloves, chopped roughly
2-3 pounds sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
1 15-ounce can of crushed tomatoes
1 quart chicken stock
1 cup peanut butter
1 cup roasted peanuts
1 Tbsp ground coriander
1 teaspoon cayenne, or to taste
Salt and black pepper
1/4 to 1/2 cup of chopped cilantro


No flour paste here.

Bentley the space alien

Bentley is in such a state of bliss in this video, cuddled up in the cat bed I knitted for him. There really is a resemblance to a space alien here. A very cute, sweet one. With fur.

They just didn't love you enough

A harrowing scene from one of my favorite movies. Bette Davis is scary in this thing - at the height of her genius. Has anyone ever captured alcoholic self-pity better than this?

Kitty in the cupboard

Oh my goodness! While preparing to shoot a DIY video, I heard a knocking sound in the cupboard. There was Bentley, standing on top of the dishes! Somehow or other - well, I guess I must have left the cupboard open and he slipped in. Getting him to "slip out" again was another matter, as he weighs at least 14 lbs. (we think, closer to 15 now) and didn't want to come out. Bentley loves to be a part of anything I'm doing, so he often shows up in my videos. And he's always the best part.

How much shock can you take?

Trust no one!

This is one of the weirdest things I've ever heard, and inspired a flurry of paranoid gifs, and even an animation (featuring paranoid stills). I think "politone" is meant to be "polytone", because the only definition of "politone" I can find is:

Politone

Politone may be available in the countries listed below.

Ingredient matches for Politone
Pioglitazone

Pioglitazone hydrochloride (a derivative of Pioglitazone) is reported as an ingredient of Politone in the following countries:
Taiwan

← International Drug Name Search

 To me it sounds like shoe polish, but never mind.

(These do play, by the way. I just like the look of them stuck together. Try playing them all at once.) Anyway, this group, this ENIGMA2000, is very X-Files, very paranoid, very into the mysterious numbers-sequence broadcasts that were covered so well on William Shatner's Weird or What? (and GOD how I miss that show, it was tons of fun. Remember that little chihuahua, and the way he came riding up on a horse?)

I randomly came across this politone stuff and it scared the living shit out of me, so I just had to know more. Pretty soon I didn't want to know more. This is some sort of weird espionage thing, spy versus spy, even though it goes by an innocuous name. Some think it even has a paranormal aspect. There are lots of examples on YouTube of numbers being read out loud, random tones, even bits of music, coming from all over the world. Nobody quite knows why. I keep thinking it's a bizarre sort of Emergency Broadcasting System, a frequency left open in case the world ends and the political bigwigs of the world want to say goodbye.

According to Wikipedia: "A numbers station is a shortwave radio station characterized by broadcasts of formatted numbers, which are believed to be addressed to intelligence officers operating in foreign countries. Most identified stations use speech synthesis to vocalize numbers, although digital modes, such as Phase-shift keying and Frequency-shift keying as well as Morse code transmissions are not uncommon. Most stations have set time schedules, or schedule patterns; however, other stations appear to broadcast at random times. Stations may or may not have set frequencies in the HF band."

It goes on, but we know enough already, don't we? These number sequences would appear to mean absolutely nothing, but they MUST have meaning or they wouldn't still be broadcast after something like 90 years. The Politone guys (for I can't even imagine a chick doing this - these fellows remind me of the Lone Gunmen on the aforementioned X Files) have their own newsletter, so dated-looking that it's even worse than mine for obsolete-looking formatting. None of it makes a damn bit of sense, so it's obvious these guys don't get out much. The photos are about an inch square, and the '90s-font text goes all the way across the screen, so that your neck is out of joint after reading a paragraph.

Anyway. I've written before about how I "hear things" in my neighborhood, particularly at night. It's disturbing. Right now things are quiet, but I have no illusions they will stay that way. It's aircraft, obviously, but WHY? and what, even? Must be the RCMP, but what would they be doing buzzing around in helicopters over my sleepy little town? And if it's the military, God help us all.

I had a thought today - something from Apocalypse Now! flashed into my head, and suddenly I realized there has to be more than one helicopter. Maybe that's why it's so loud? There's a resonant frequency between all of them which threatens to make my skull explode.

I just had to express my paranoia in an animation (below) which I call Cold War One.  It is, mercifully, silent.

There's no place like . . . Izmir

Turkish adaptations of classic movies are always particularly bizarre. Well, bizarre to US maybe, though not to the average Turk. 

As with most of these things, there are no subtitles, but we can kind of guess at the action. I mean, if you haven't seen The Wizard of Oz five thousand times - But I guarantee you, you've never seen it quite like this.

Instead of Over the Rainbow, the movie opens with this:

Let it never be said that corners were cut in this production, but the entire storm sequence is done in animation. Calling it animation is stretching a point, as very little moves in it. The figure of Dorothy is dragged across the screen while the credits roll (or blink on and off). 

The actual storm scene is a bit incomprehensible. It collapses 20 minutes or so of film into half a minute of cheap cartoon.

From what I am able to make out, Mama doesn't make much effort to get Dorothy into the storm cellar, which is located INSIDE the house.

Like the original, this is a musical. Sort of. Sometimes the characters just get up and spontaneously dance. The music is so strange, however. Some of it is traditional Turkish stuff, I guess; some sounds like Little House on the Prairie, but then this thing breaks in:

I wouldn't advise watching the whole thing. I didn't. It's more fun to skip through it. You'll find an atrocity at every point.

P. S. The screenshots from this are uniformly hideous, so I must include a few of them.

Chopsocky: the legend and legacy of Bruce Lee

Oh-hoh-hoh-hoah

Oh-hoh-hoh-hoah

Oh-hoh-hoh-hoah

Oh-hoh-hoh-hoah

[Chorus:]

Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting

Those kids were fast as lightning

In fact, it was a little bit frightening

But they fought with expert timing

There were funky China men from funky Chinatown

They were chopping them up

They were chopping them down

It's an ancient Chinese art

And everybody knew their part

From a feinting, to a slip

And a kickin' from the hip

Everybody was Kung Fu fighting

Those kids were fast as lightning

In fact it was a little bit frightening

But they fought with expert timing

There was funky Billie Chin and little Sammy Chong

He said, here comes the big boss, let's get it on

We took the bow and made a stand

Started swaying with the hand

A sudden motion made me skip

Now we're into a brand new trip

Everybody was Kung Fu fighting

Those kids were fast as lightning

In fact it was a little bit frightening

But they did it with expert timing

Oh-hoh-hoh-hoh, ha

Oh-hoh-hoh-hoh, ha

Oh-hoh-hoh-hoh-ha

Keep on, keep on, keep on

Sure enough

Everybody was Kung Fu fighting

Those kids were fast as lightning

In fact it was a little bit frightening

Make sure you have expert timing

Kung Fu fighting, had to be fast as lightning...

Kitten on the keys

This is all too short

Cat races, turkey soccer and a ferret in your pants

YES! I am an author

Margaret Gunning

Margaret is the author of The Glass Character, a novel about the life and times of silent screen comedian Harold Lloyd. She loved researching and writing this novel and believes it's her best work to date. The Glass Character (Thistledown Press)is available in bookstores, libraries, Amazon.com, Chapters/Indigo.com, Thistledown Press.ca, Barnes and Noble.com, Kindle, Kobo, and everywhere fine books are sold.

A published novelist since 2003, Margaret  is a seasoned writer who has published her work in a variety of venues (columns, newspaper articles, poetry, short fiction and book reviews). Her first published novel, Better Than Life (NeWest Press, 2003) received excellent reviews, with the Edmonton Journal calling it "fiction at its finest" and the Vancouver Sun naming it as a worthy contender for the Leacock Award.

This was followed in 2005 by another novel, Mallory (Turnstone Press), a harrowing tale of a social misfit ostracized and bullied by her peers until she finds dubious acceptance in a group of teenagers living on the fringes of the law. Of the many reviews this novel received, not one was negative.

In addition to The Glass Character, Margaret has written a book of poetry (The Red Diary, based on the diary of Anne Frank) and Bus People, a novel about the inhabitants of Vancouver's notorious Downtown Eastside. She hopes these books will soon find a place on the shelf beside The Glass Character.
See more

› Learn more at Author Central

 

                    

                                                                   

 

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This is more-or-less a transcript of my Amazon Author Page. I used to include a link to it every few posts, not so that people would buy my books - that's too much to ask, I think - but to just let people know, if they are interested, that I am the author of three NOT-self-published novels. I did it the old-fashioned way, with traditional publishers, and paid for it in blood. It was not a pleasant experience, not because of the writing - hey, that was great, tons of fun - but because of the long, arduous process of trying to get them promoted and noticed. Because they did not become bestsellers, because I was not anointed into the hallowed halls of CanLit, I was left with the feeling that I had failed. No one tried to talk me out of that feeling, by the way. But here they are, my life's work! It's something, I guess. I never wanted to make money with it, but once you're in the marketplace, there is incredible pressure to sell your product. To me, that feels like selling one of your kids, or at least a chunk of your own soul. No one thinks of this when they eagerly strive to be a Published Author, because it is the best-kept secret of publishing. Besides, everyone is sure their book will win the Giller and the Booker and, perhaps, the Nobel, top the New York Times Review of Books for a year, then be made into a big-box movie that wins an Oscar for Best Picture - or will, if that Price-Waterhouse guy is on the ball. I had all those dreams too, but damned if they weren't right all along - the writing really is the best part.

What's inside a Rattlesnake Rattle?

             Well. . . . . . . . . . . WHAT??

Two men named Bill (and other poems)

Blogger's note. It's been a while since I felt like sharing my poetry with anyone. Having it "rejected" - booted back in your face for decades - leaves scars. It is traumatic, as is hearing, several hundred times, "We really like your poetry, BUT. . . " 

One editor said, "I hate to turn away what might turn out to be the next best-seller, BUT. . . " (we don't think it has the quality we're looking for). That kind of casual cruelty disguised as compliment is nearly universal in publishing.

The horror of the Stephen Galloway affair ripped the veil off Canada's publishing Mafia, and I am now relieved I will never be a part of it (though I spent the better part of my life longing for it, jumping at it like a balloon that always popped up out of my reach).

It's not that I haven't been published at all. A dozen or so poems over that many years simply wasn't worth the grief. But here some of it is, mostly written a while ago. It means something to me. More than I can say. There's quite a bit of it here, because I've found in the past that if I do a Part 2, no one reads it.

I would say     

I would say that you are springtime,

That lambs

could not be lovelier: laughing bells

Of eyes bright with seeing,

the shining, shone of you.

I would say that you are a

Renaissance painting

of a beautiful woman:

So restored

that the paint gleams; its sheen

Fresh from the brush; its wetness

smelling new.

I would say that you are living

Water:  I see tiny

perfect selves, suspended

upside-down in the silver

Merriment of your eyes.

If true, then I would say that you are

Not my brother; but some other; some

me not yet thought of; next year’s

Reflection

cast lightly (God’s amusement)

over waters

rendered still.

                                                

Gina

sweet shy

dark girl          I’ve seen her

here before

  

she always wore the best clothes

(silvery things/bangles

feathered skirts

necklace made

from the teeth of a wolf)

  

now I see Gina in the ward

kitchen.        Still beautiful

big-eyed

part Cree                            her hair tied back

she shows me the tracings of

partly-healed               gashes

sewn back together in

a gridwork

                                                           hands/

on her arms,                                            wrists.

She must be twenty or so

No one comes to visit

Once she had a boyfriend

but he got sick too

  

                                                        

 Delivery

This is a strange

Horse I ride, feet

Pointing up, all bloodless and blue

On a long trail of ether.

My brain swims in a vault of chrome

through the removed murmur of voices

and a distant

Clinical clanking.

I will emerge now, slick and

purple as a baby.  The surgeon’s eyes

Crinkle over the mask.

Hands cool as paper, hands that have never

Handled a snake, patiently suture

All of my holes.  The work is true.

Emergency waiting room  

  

Which is worse:  the spilled

smell of

accidents

or the sound

of magazines

slowly

growing older

in this

ticking house of death?

  

                                           

Sorry

My heart unclasped

One day in your office,

Suddenly, all in a shot, the catch

Broke loose, andit

Fell behind a pile of files.

I did not mean to;

It was an accident of gravity.

Earth reached up and pulled it down.

I stood dizzy,

My centre lost, the core

Riven.  It felt silly

to lean over like that.

My face grew hot.

There was no way to put it back.

The space had grown over already;

The fall had changed me.

I left that place different,

Looked outside.  The light

Hurt my skin.  The world

was a new color.

I wiped my eyes, and kept on walking.

A small place

in my chest

Grew still with singing.

                                          

THREE-PART INVENTION

(a)     indigo eyes

I am the salt

you are the sweet

hair/

        My heartsprung

(horse) of the air,

au clair

ah! care,

           clover

to the/stables,

We.

     Drenched with the scent

of hens of hay

                   dear

of tree:  your/      odor

(of salt

(of sap

(of sea

b) cunningerotic

Lip, let me laugh

You.  Set the salt

           Sally, sashay down

               The hay of my mind.

                                            Seashorn,

                                      feverworn

                       hairborne:  Your

                         face a chiming, a

                                     Brining.  The

                                        (stainglassed

                                           seahorse

                                          of your

                                   (voicy

                                (ice

         

c)       Fifth chakra (for ray lynch)

a blues tunnel

blamed open

pitched down

to the base of the soul

                                                                 Mermaids spinning

                                  in your throat, Dear

                                                          heart:  shining vessel,

           

opened for a song,

shut open,

Wept for a penny

disabled

                      the               

             by / dreaming 

                  door

Love is no quick thing

(a halfsonnet/explanation)

Love is no quick thing, Saltstream surprise

Unevening your pearling teeth at dawn:

Quick!  like a foxglove/silvertail is gone,

It tips the world’s rude balance/wild surmise.

Inside my glands the trump of lovedoom cries;

with white kidgloves I’d pluck your soulstrings’ songs

(Inside my brain your lovebeat

dongs and dongs

dongs and dongs

dongs and dongs

                                                                                             and      dongs

                                                                                                                        dongs)                                                                                                                   

Saxophone (for Bill Prouten)

i don’t know who invented this

reflexive question mark of an instrument

but i think it was a good thing

for it’s great to look at,

with fat keys like frog eyes

and a big bell like royal jelly

you could keep flowers in there if you wanted to,

extra socks

or even a clock

Snakes kink too

and this sound is snakey

purply mauve as the deepest bruise

and raunchy

as a man in love

smoked as some cat of the night

disappearing over a fence

it makes leaps

(but only because it has to)

There is no

morning saxophone

this is a sound that

pulls the shades down

a hangover

howl

fading to twilight

or the blackmost

belly button

of the night

Few can wrap their lips around

this gooseneck

without some harm coming to them

for this is an instrument

with a long history of

hollowing out

all but the most hardy

Bird flew into a pane

of glass and was

smashed

we don’t know why it does this to people

(maybe it was mad at him

for taking it all to such extremes)

but how could you blow this thing

halfway

i ask you

how could you rear back

in some great pained whiplash of the spine

without a sense of

terrible commitment

i never much cared for

saxophones myself

until i heard one blown correctly at last

jazz is a genre i will never understand

but perhaps that’s good

for like the priesthood, one must enter into it

without question

reservation

or doubt

two men named bill

i love two men named Bill

and one of them is fancy

one is plain

i love one for his looks

the other for his brain

and when we are together

(and especially when not)

such yearning for his body

pulls apart

the art

of the life i’ve made

here in this patch of shade

one Bill plays the saxophone

the other Bill washes the floor

one writes songs and sucks on bongs

and one’s worth dying for

i’d run away with one Bill

but that doesn’t mean i’d have two

the laws of the world don’t work that way

i’d have to choose

or lose

both Bills

(which would kill

me.)

one Bill made two babies

one just made me rue

one Bill’s a restless bachelor boy

the other is painfully true

there are two

sets of eyes

one brown

one blue

four eyes i love so well:

see my soul reflected in the

searching blue

fall in cognac amber

‘til i drunken drown

i love two men

and both of them are Bill

there’s a cost to loving them

so well

when god presents his bill

i’ll have to pay my way

and choose

or lose

both Bills

(. . . which would kill

me.)

Gone west                                                         

It seems in my life I have always

moved west, New Brunswick, Alberta,

the boardwalk behind the Quay;

it’s a left-handed sort of life

driving me heartwards, though never,

no never,

heartwise.

                                           that day

when I thought I saw you/  on the boardwalk

my guts jumped:                       it

jerked the hook in my colon

(you always knew about bait)

You know how it was:    I wanted to stand on my desk

on the last day of classes

and shout:  o captain!  My captain!

But you had your own rotation – I saw

it reel from view, and

(helpless to catch you)

watched your spiralling apogee

What is the remotest segment of an orbit?

Booze, blondes.  Too much of

a good thing.  But I did love you.

We wandered, Pooh and Piglet in an

Escher maze, searching for heffalumps.

You calmly said, “Watch this,” and set fire

to my mind.

I saw you as the human yoyo, bobbing up and

                                                                   down,

sleeping, walking the dog, in and out

and ‘round the world.

I knew you’d be back, like hounds,

like a cycle of blood, like black

fruit springing into tree.  When the

string broke, I hid my eyes, and

said, but it’s only a lute,

it will heal itself,

half-hoping I was wrong.

I don’t know why or how God looks

after you, beached like Stanley’s whale,

stared at by the curious.  I don’t know

how God manages.  It was beyond me.

And so I kept on moving.