A smoggy day in London Town

Loving Pink: the little angels of Camay

Belong Movie Trailer

There's a very long story behind this, the story of a church meltdown and the crisis of leadership that caused it. But I can't tell it now, it's too long and harrowing, except to say that I was right in the middle of it. This was about 15 years ago, so it's truly incredible that the person at the centre of it is still posting "trailers" for a revenge movie which has gone through about four titles (including Church Bullies) and does not, in fact, exist. This in spite of the fact that it was listed with the IMDB and announced as an entry in the Sundance Film Festival.

It just goes to show how long one person can hold a grudge. 

(Later thoughts) I'm not sure why, but I watched this a couple more times, and was even more baffled. The woman playing "Mrs. Sanborga" (a name very close to the real name of someone in the church) seems almost comic, and why is it a pew is parked out in the vestibule or the lobby or whatever it is? I've never seen that before. The things hanging on the wall are also pretty incomprehensible.

This is the shortest of the half-dozen or so trailers I've seen for the non-existent movie by "Reverend Shaka", leading me to believe that his budget is now pretty lean. His first entry had stock footage of African dancers bidding him a farewell from his native country so he could serve in Canada, only to be thwarted by a bunch of insensitive, ungrateful racists.

The Reverend did start his own church after the meltdown, towing along an assortment of disaffected former members. It lasted a few months. The web site hinted at conflict that could not (or at least wasn't going to be) resolved, with resolutions nonetheless that "next year we will make a new start".

It was one of the most painful things I ever lived through, and I never even connected the dots with the physical and emotional collapse I experienced in the year after he was fired, until now. I had enough other reasons, I guess. And besides, he was gone now, and everything was going to be all right. 

All right. But out of four or five candidates, the church chose him. He did not fall from the sky, any more than bad husbands or bad jobs or bad auto mechanics fall from the sky. WE CHOOSE THEM.

I wonder why no one ever even considered that.

Life in slow motion

Frankenstein meets the Space Monster (1965) Trailer

It's better to watch just the trailers of these things, because the movies themselves are unbearably boring. They're made on a budget of about $200.00, so no wonder, but the monster effects are still gratifying to watch. They're so bad because they tried to be good. 

Do you notice the bald-headed guy looks just like Dr. Evil? 

Kitty up a tree (come rescue me!)

These rescued kitties all look alike - hugely dilated pupils, whiskers at full span, ears tensed, and they all meow in that "help me, help me!" way. 

Ringo Starr: silent movie

The original has a different format and just won't fit, but I made a couple of really handsome longer gifs of this short video. I like what he does with the flower. Watch them while you play this song:

I loved Ringo then, and I love Ringo now. From the sad-eyed mutt of the Beatles, he has become ultra-hip and cool without being obnoxious. And he still has his lovely Liverpool accent.


[Intro]
Huh-huh! Huh-huh
(Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah)
(Aye-aye-aye-aye)

[Verse 1]
A lady that I know just came from Colombia
She smiled because I did not understand
Then she held out some marijuana, ha ha!
She said it was the best in all the land

[Chorus]
And I said
"No, no, no, no, I don't smoke it no more
I'm tired of waking up on the floor
No, thank you, please, it only makes me sneeze
And then it makes it hard to find the door"

(Ah-ah-aye-aye)

[Verse 2]
A woman that I know just came from Majorca, Spain
She smiled because I did not understand (Parazzi! Parazzi!) (Olé!)
Then she held out a ten pound bag of cocaine
She said it was the finest in the land

[Chorus]
And I said
"No, no, no, no, I don't [sniff] no more
I'm tired of waking up on the floor
No, thank you, please, it only makes me sneeze
And then it makes it hard to find the door"

[Bridge]
(Aye-aye-aye-aye)
(Aye-aye-aye-aye)
(Aye-aye-aye-aye)
(Aye-aye-aye)

[Verse 3]
A man that I know just came from Nashville, Tennessee, oh (oh no!)
He smiled because I did not understand
Then he held out some moonshine whiskey, oh ho
He said it was the best in all the land (and he wasn't joking!)

[Chorus]
And I said
"No, no, no, no, I don't drink it no more
I'm tired of waking up on the floor
No, thank you, please, it only makes me sneeze
And then it makes it hard to find the door"

Well, I said
"No, no, no, no, I can't take it no more
I'm tired of waking up on the floor
No, thank you, please, it only makes me sneeze
And then it makes it hard to find the door"

[Outro]
Hey, yeah!
"I'll just have another drink, barman, have you got a large brandy?"

High School Hellcats -1958

This was a whole genre in the '50s, "bad girl" movies which showed young women in compromising situations - in other words, screwing their brains out, though it was always implied rather than shown. Usually they came to ruin, but it was fun watching them come to ruin, and also fun to sit there in judgement after being so highly entertained. Nothing more fascinating than watching someone skid out of bounds and crash, then say to yourself, "What can you expect? She had it coming." 

Though the '50s are thought of as a dull, Eisenhower-stifled time, they actually weren't. This type of low-budget, girls-going-wild movie was immensely popular, though few of them became mainstream (except the male-dominated Rebel Without a Cause and The Wild One). The Beat Generation was making itself known and heard. Elvis burst on the scene, a white man singing like a black man, and obscenely thrusting his pelvis so that Ed Sullivan had to show him only from the waist up. Civil rights suddenly became crucial, whereas in the 1940s people couldn't understand why black folks were so "uppity" and unappreciative of all they were allowed to do now that they were out of chains. Cultural metamorphosis was already unfolding, though after the '60s we looked back and saw it differently. The truth is, hippies represented a tiny fraction of the culture then, and the rest of us were paisley-coloured, bead-wearing wanna-be's.

I wonder how many prudish young women watched movies like these and then just decided to burst their chains and become High School Hellcats. Doesn't seem too likely, but maybe somebody did.

Mothra: THE RETURN!

I was going to post old Mothra gifs/videos with these, but why? They are so sublime the way they are. Moths are spookier than butterflies, dustier, furrier, with thicker bodies and legs like one of those exotic, plushy Amazon spiders. I believe these are both cecropia moths, which I had never heard of, though for some reason I was aware of the cecropia beetle. Metamorphosis is a strange thing, and I don't know why anything in nature happens the way it does. Is there a God? Too early in the morning to contemplate such a question (even though it isn't early at all), but it knows how to happen, which sorrows me all the more that we seem to be systematically destroying the natural world. The puzzlement over how this can possibly be, as if it too is just happening all by itself and can't be stopped, dismays me most of all. But the internet asks only that we enjoy these images, even marvel at them, and then get on with our day.

The ruins of happiness

Now I know why some places are considered "haunted" - not just because they look creepy, but because past joy and vibrant life have fled. People see shapes moving about in these places, feel creepiness and cold spots where normal physics has caved in. This does not happen by itself. People leave for all kinds of reasons, but a lot of it (like those abandoned malls popping up everywhere) is financial. These places just don't pay any more, or are out of date or too expensive to keep up. So people move on to some other playground, which in turn will also be abandoned. The human race gobbles through pleasure and resources until it all collapses, wonders what could have happened, then moves on to some newer, finer place to exploit. 

"Why? Why did you leave me?"

I must admit I've never heard of MaraNatha almond butter (and in fact, I thought Maranatha was some sort of religious reference) until last night, when I saw this ad while watching Dateline. 

I thought it was pretty cool, and wanted to make a gif of it and then reanimate it. This involves shifting the order of the frames, subtracting frames and duplicating others, changing the speed, and going forwards and backwards. 

Below is the gif from the original ad, and then the reanimated version I made from it.

P. S. I was right about Maranatha:

maranatha [mar-uh-nath-uh]

Word Origin

interjection

O Lord, come: used as an invocation in I Cor. 16:22.

Another translation:

Word Origin and History for maranatha

Expand

Maranatha

late 14c., a Bible word, from Greek maranatha, untranslated Semitic word in Cor. xvi:22, where it follows Greek anathema, and therefore has been taken as part of a phrase and used as "a curse." Usually assumed to be from Aramaic maran atha "Our Lord has come," which would make the common usage erroneous (see OED entry), but possibly it is a falsetransliteration of Hebrew mohoram atta "you are put under the ban,"which would make more sense in the context. [Klein]

. . . So what does all this have to do with almond butter?

Giant Cat Japanese Commercial (2014)

The only thing better than a giant cat head is a giant cat. For some reason, ads from Japan are so much more clever and imaginitive than anything we produce here. I guess this is an ad for gum, but who cares? It could be an ad for anything.

My cat attacked me tonight, and I'm worried about it. He's usually so gentle and sweet. He kept jumping up into my new office chair every time I got up to do anything. When I tried to pick him up to turf him out of it, the way his claws all shot out at once reminded me alarmingly of the shark's teeth in Jaws. He had taken such possession of my arm that I had to pull it back out of my sweater sleeve for self-protection.

Bentley!! 

Is it the fact it's a new chair and therefore foreign to him, weird-smelling? An intruder in the familiar territory of my office? Is he trying to protect me from it? I think it's more likely he's trying to own it. It got so bad tonight that Bill had to tip the chair almost upside-down to get him out of there. I was even afraid to go in the room.

We have since made up, but it was a reminder once more that no matter how sweet and loving, a cat's a cat. For a' that.

Books I haven't forgotten

This, my friends, is the whole reason I began this blog. The Glass Character, in case you haven't heard, is the name Harold Lloyd gave to his glasses-wearing screen persona (and why he said glass instead of glasses, nobody knows, but it was a hell of a lot more poetical). It is also the title of my third novel, which practically no one has read. I gave up on posting links to Amazon, my author's page, etc. because it made no difference whatsoever. I sold, like, three copies last year. Nevertheless, it IS a good novel, even my daughter liked it (and like Mikey, she hates everything), and though it quickly disappeared into oblivion, and the Lloyd family treated it like some sort of poison, I am still proud of it because I am basically out of touch with reality. 

A friend of mine wondered why I was so hurt when he wrote an article about The Glass Character in a feature called Friday's Forgotten Novels. He simply could not understand it, and thought I should appreciate the attention and publicity. Hey, no one remembers this book at all! I'm sure that would make you rush out to buy it.

But never mind all that, it WOULD make a good feature film, because it's about Harold Lloyd, and no one has ever made a feature film about Harold Lloyd, or ANY sort of film. Eventually, someone will, and if it is ripped off of my novel, which it might be, there is really nothing I can do about it.

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

Calendar girl

Hilda: all wet

Friday on my mind

This squirrel needs Dr. Now

Fattest squirrel I have ever seen. They're never exactly thin, but in the fall they begin to fatten up for a winter that never really arrives. Oh, sometimes we get a dump or two of snow, but to call that "winter" in Canada is an insult. But it's hardwired into these creatures to squirrel away food, to gather it and leap around with it in their mouths for a while, to look industrious, then scrabble away in the dirt and bury it, almost immediately forgetting where it is, then digging up some other squirrel's plunder and eating it on the spot. They don't hibernate around here, any more than the geese migrate, so they just keep on eating all winter and getting fatter. I don't hear all the swearing and scolding now that I did in September-October, but I'm not sure what that means. (Most bizarre moment: hearing a sound kind of like a squirrel scolding, then turning around and realizing it was a Steller's jay imitating a squirrel). I also haven't heard that nasty little red squirrel for a while (click on bottom to watch it on YouTube):

This guy was just furious for a couple of months, though at first I was sure it was some territorial bird. The red squirrel appeared to own the clump of bushes in the corner of the yard, though once I saw THREE black squirrels in there, thumbing their little black noses at the red squirrel, who went absolutely insane. Squirrels do this on purpose, just to be annoying.

I hear a lot less chattering and squeaking and swearing now, but I see a whole lot more eating.

Cats do nothing

                                               Cats do nothing.

Hercules: NOT the Disney version!

Is this the worst animation in recorded history?

I have a certain fascination with "worsts", though it's often a matter of personal opinion just what constitutes a worst. But this must be one of them.

I mean.

I found this animated Italian version of Hercules several years go, then promptly forgot all about it. I think I featured it in my Festival of Bad Animation at some point, but it was only a snippet. This is an attempt to make three 45-second gifs from it (nine full-length ones in all, a real spectacle) representing the "highlights" of the story, which isn't really a story at all but a series of vignettes vaguely based on some kind of Greek myth about somebody. (Don't worry about sound, or the lack of it, because the soundtrack is completely unintelligible anyway). This thing makes the old Trans-Lux TV series The Mighty Hercules look like high art.

Though I had a few excerpts, I wasn't able to track down the whole movie for the longest time, because I kept searching under Hercules and getting that wretched Disney version. I finally took a screenshot of one of the videos, put it through Google reverse image, and matched it to another video I didn't know about, and found the magic word in the description that unlocked the mystery.

DINGO!

No, not "bingo". Dingo is the name of the animation studio which turned out this baffling thing, and many others which are almost worse. Armed with that information, I found the whole movie in Italian, without subtitles (for don't the characters tell the story? Sort of), plus another version dubbed in Finnish! 

This is an international production, obviously, for Dingo Pictures isn't Italian OR Finnish.  After a lot of digging around, I was able to find this snippet on an animation fan site:

Dingo Pictures is a German animation company, consisting of the husband and wife team Ludwig Ickert and Simone Greiss. The studio is infamous for creating traditionally-animated cartoons based on fairy tales and concepts plagiarizing the works of Disney, Pixar, Don Bluth, and DreamWorks. These cartoons are highly regarded as some of the worst animated films ever, with extremely low-budget animation,  disjointed plot lines that almost always go nowhere, repetitive dialogue, reuse of music and sound effects, lack of dub actors (usually two voice actors, one male and one female, in some cases only one), and shoddy character design, often looking as if it were traced from another cartoon.They have gained a cult following over time.

One of the most bizarre Disney ripoff appearances in this movie is Pongo, the leading dog of 101 Dalmatians. No kidding, right in the middle of Greek mythology we have this handsome spotted dog sitting there, totally out of place, and - yes - looking very much like he has been traced. I was also to discover - oh, this just gets worse and worse - that they DID do a ripoff of that movie, called Dalmatians, a pastiche of every dog movie ever made, including Lady and the Tramp, Rin Tin Tin, and Lassie Come Home. 

Though it does not quite sink to the rock-bottom level of Paddy the Pelican, which looks like a pencil test for something which was never actually made, Hercules is still pretty bad, with lots of laughs to get you over the boring parts. And there ARE boring parts. Believe me.

Retro recipes: taste or dare!

There are lots of web pages - not to mention YouTube channels - about retro recipes, mostly those horrendous gelatine "salads" of the '40s and '50s, when leftovers were not scraped into the garbage but encased in various flavours of Jello. The modern palate can't cope with this, as witness these really cool gifs depicting women tasting some of this stuff. Myself, I've made Sunshine Salad the odd time, though my kids looked at it in horror and wouldn't touch it. My husband kind of likes it, so maybe it's a generational thing? 

Howard Dean Scream

Every day, and in every way, I am learning more and more about things that are of no use to me whatsoever. I learn most of it from that torrent of misinformation, the internet, and from YouTube in particular, just cuz it's such a great source of distraction.

I stumbled across the Howard Dean scream some time ago - I didn't even know who he was, and am still not sure, but that sound he made was enough to end his political career. But then I became aware of the Wilhelm Scream. A character in a Western (presumably named Wilhelm) from some time in the 1950s was shot, and gave off this sound, this highly-unlikely, high-pitched, strangled male scream, not unlike the squeal of an injured dog. Sound technicians across Hollywood must be in a special sort of union, because the Wilhelm Scream has been dubbed into countless other movies, and is still being used today as a sort of sly auditory in-joke.

But my theory is that Howard Dean somehow got rigged up to the wrong sound equipment, so that a  Wilhelm Scream issued involuntarily out of his own capacious, seemingly-sincere, highly political mouth.

Sounds a bit like a rebel yell to me, but being a Canadian, how would I ever know?

FUDGE WARS!

I was YouTubing around (late at night, like always) and began to look at fudge recipes, as my last two batches hadn't turned out very well. I found the following jaw-dropping exchange between what could only be called a fudge scientist, and a few other people who were obviously having him on: but what made it even more delicious (pardon the pun) is that he had NO IDEA they were having him on. He took them entirely seriously in their earnest questions about the specific gravity of the fudge he was making - even asking him for a copy of his spreadsheet! - and just continued to pontificate, a self-involved, know-it-all, university-certified crashing bore, the type you never want to get caught with at a party. He ripped into the one person who had something intelligent (not to mention relevant) to say about the whole thing, accusing her of finding spiritual fulfillment in failure. Ain't YouTube grand?


MrSwanley2 years ago (edited)
I have tried making fudge many times, and found it near impossible to get consistent results using this technique. Then, being an engineer, I realised that both temperature and soft ball tests are (unreliable) ways to estimate water content. If you knew the target water content you could just measure it directly by weighing the pot and contents, before and after - there is no need to estimate it. I now believe that perfect fudge has a water content of around 10.5%. Hence with this recipe your starting weight is 1094g (+pot) and I predict that if you cook it until you reduce to 931g (+pot), leave to cool for 8 mins, beat for 5 minutes and pour... you should end up with perfect fudge every time. I made myself a little spreadsheet to calculate moisture content of common ingredients, and so far I've hit the nail every time I've followed it. In fact this method is precise enough to go for a particular type of fudge, e.g. moist or slightly dry.
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AnyaLake1 year ago
+MrSwanley well good for you, you just took the joy out of it!
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MrSwanley1 year ago (edited)
+anyalake The joy comes from eating and gifting perfectly made fudge, in fact I'm not aware of what other joy there is to be had. However, if you get some kind of spiritual fulfillment from failure then you can just keep on doing what you're doing. Nobody is forcing you.
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Joseph Mory1 year ago
+MrSwanley from one engineer to another, would you care sharing that spreadsheet?
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MrSwanley1 year ago
+Joseph Mory I'm willing, but I don't know how to get a file to you. I don't use any file sharing sites and I believe YT would block the URL anyway. I don't see a personal message system either. Besides which, the spreadsheet is nothing special. It's just a list of ingredients by weight (g), for each ingredient I input an estimated water % and use that to calculate the water grams. I sum the columns to calculate total weight and total water %, and a final section allows me to enter a target water% and predict what the total weight should be when that amount of water is removed. Basic assumption that all mass lost is water vapour. My water% estimates for important ingredients are milk(87%), sweetened condensed milk(33%), butter(15%). That's in the UK: different parts of the world have different standards for solids content of dairy products, so I would double check those.
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Joseph Mory1 year ago
I'm sure I'll be able to figure it out, thanks for the input!
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AnyaLake1 year ago
a spiritually fulfilled person would have sent a PM, exchanged emails or even posted onto google docs given that everyone posting here by definition has a google account. Right back to failing in life I go ...
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MrSwanley1 year ago (edited)
+anyalake I am here trying to share ideas with other people who are interested in making fudge. You seem to be intent on nothing except picking a fight - for no good reason that I can see. Thanks for reminding me about Google: I just used it to mute any further posts from you.
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Fyfy zyzy1 year ago
+MrSwanley I was wondering your calculations include the pot, how much does your pot weigh? Just so I could calculate and get exact results every time but with using my pot weight. Thank you for sharing what you have discovered.
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MrSwanley1 year ago (edited)
+Fyfy zyzy The weights I gave don't include the pot, that's why I say (+pot) beside them. They are just the sum of the weights of the recipe ingredients, before and after removing water. Add the weight of your own pot to both.
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Sam LSD1 year ago
thanks for that scientific calculation about moisture content.
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Zilliz 0002 months ago
MrSwanley or....you could just use a candy thermometer! !
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ferociousgumby20 hours ago
Woah!
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FUDGE WARS, ROUND 2!: I just perused a few more fudge recipes on YouTube, and you wouldn't believe who popped up in the comments, giving everyone even more grief about the sacred science of fudge-making. Some poor lady, obviously just trying to be helpful, posted a conversion from British weight measurement to the standard North American dry measure system (cups instead of ounces/mls). And once again, the Fudge Grinch popped up. . . 

Abigail Skelton2 years ago
FOR EVERYONE IN AMERICA, HERE ARE THE INGREDIENTS: 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp butter 2 cups brown sugar 1/2 cup milk about 1 2/3 cup sweetened condensed milk what recipe should I convert next?
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Abigail Skelton2 years ago
+thecraftyzebra Your welcome! Any suggestions for another recipe to convert?
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MrSwanley2 years ago
+the wild one I hate it when people use liquid volumetric measures for solids such as butter, and things with variable density, such as sugar. Even in America I'd have thought people would want to use sensible, repeatable measures. So, no more conversions please.
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Sheree Hyde1 year ago
+the wild one Thank you for converting this for us in the US! Love these recipes! Please do caramel tarts!

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Sheree Hyde1 year ago
+MrSwanley Speak for yourself only. I appreciate the conversions!
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Tabitha Crouse1 year ago
Thank you so much! That is extremely helpful!
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E Winter1 year ago
I know right. mrswanley has a lot of nerve speaking for everyone. Needs to mind his business if the conversations aren't useful for him.
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Melatina771 year ago (edited)
Great tasting fudge and easy to make!
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MrSwanley1 year ago
+E Winter It would help if you learned to speak and interpret English before making a fool of yourself. I clearly said "_I_ hate it", not "_we_ hate it", i.e. at no time did I claim to speak for anyone except myself. And I stand by what I said, which most people with a brain will recognize as common sense.
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Woahhh!!