Ostrich chicks: down the highway!

                               
                                      Fuzzy chicks run and fall down!

Puffer Fish releasing water

I'm not sure if this is an actual puffer fish, or just a fish full of water, but it's gratifying to watch.

Peony in bloom

I wish they were mine

Dangerous Waterfall and Road in NEPAL

You might call this video a sequel to one of my favorites, the crazy blokes on a bus in the Himalayas. But these people aren't even scared! They act as if it is the most natural thing in the world for their vehicle to ride the waterfall as if they were going over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

Reporter Miscalculates Building Demolition News Blooper

                                           "Five minutes, huh?"

How Science Comes Into All Our Lives (vintage infographic)

Haters, trolls, and poached chicken breasts

Every once in a while I see a comments section that is so bizarre, I have to try to convey the essence of it here (with no names or dates or other identifying marks, so if someone comes after me, I will plead ignorance). I was sitting there half-asleep, late at night as usual,  watching one of those wholesome down-home cooking channels on YouTube, when I saw a rather incredible exchange of comments between viewers and the "tuber" (with her comments in italics). Obviously, some comments which the cooking person thought were offensive had already been deleted, so the conversation started here: 

I was not cutting you down, just thought it could of gone a little faster. Sorry.

cutting me down isn't possible, you wanted me to read and respond or you would not have left the comment -It's ok though, I don't strive to please people I don't know. I merely am trying to create memories for my family and I'm sharing some recipes. take care

WOW, guess you can't take it right. Everyone has an opinion you better get use to it. Sorry you feel that way. Lets stop this please. Didn't mean to hurt your feelings that was just my opinion.

You didn't hurt my feelings, that is not possible as I don't know you. I don't have to get use to rude folks, but its always amazing that when I respond to their rude comments, they find me rude. LOL - Mirrors are ugly sometimes. Opinions are great when they are solicited. At no point in the vid did I ask for your opinion. Leaving a comment is NOT an opinion when you go out of your way to be negative. Take care, when you stop leaving comments, I will stop . There is a chance, I'm not the channel for you and I'll just delete and block you, sad but it would not appear that you are not a supporter, but the opposite.

  

If your going to stay in this business you better be a little stronger. It was not a cut down just an opinion. Sorry.

Business?? surely your kidding. You DON'T know me so I'm not sure how you know my strength, and AGAIN, i didn't ask for your opinion. :)

(Whewsy! I couldn't believe the overkill here, the extreme sensitivity and snippyness towards someone who had probably said something like, "This video ran a little too slow". Several others echoed the same sentiment, but this time it brought about an actual attack. "You didn't hurt my feelings, that is not possible as I don't know you" is pretty cold. What is really weird, to me, is the fact that the woman says "if I want your opinion I'll ask for it!" Her implication is that a comments section should not include any opinions. What's it for, then? Anyway, as usual a lot of clucking biddies came to her defense:)

I loved the stainless steel sounds. Better than using teflon pans that scrap off and cause health issues. Chicken breast can be a little bland but adding spices and herbs solves that problem. Any good cook knows that. Someone said lighting was not so good. If not it didn't matter, I didn't miss a thing !! These are on my menu for tomorrow night. Hubby and I love chicken pot pies.

Bless your sweet heart!! Thanks for watching, Sissie!!

("Sissie"? I assume this woman is Southern. Maybe it's just that anyone who praises her is obviously her sister.)

I truly liked the idea & recipe but honey, don't even reply to these negative ppl. I can't believe their rudeness!! Some needs their tongues boiled because that's so unnessacery & hurtful!! I believe alot of jealousy because they didn't make the vlog!! U have explained that it was a spur of the moment idea & ur son started videoing!! Don't respond to those kind of ppl cause it puts u on their level. Not coming bk at all is better!! I liked it & no video is perfect! I live alone and these r ideal for singles too because I can fix ahead & freeze. Thank u for ur time & idea!! Ppl need to lighten up & if u can't say something positive then move on!! Again, thanks & God Bless!!

Thank you I love the ladies that wear "capes" :) you are my hero today ! Perfection is not something I achieve, but I strive everyday. I'm NOT a cooking show so I have no idea why they complain or think I'm interested in their critique - but whatever LOL - its for the women like you and me that I make videos along with my family which they love them no matter who doesn't.

(Tongues boiled? For saying the video went on too long or the lighting was poor? The overreactions and wrong assumptions in comments sections never cease to amaze me. By the way, this video was posted on an actual cooking/lifestyle channel, one that she had maintained for several years already, and was hardly "spur-of-the-moment". Comments weren't disabled, so didn't that mean people could comment, or did it all have to be sticky-gooey praise?)

As a Therapist it crossed my mind here, that what we give attention to...we get more of: ignore or delete the rude ones. Keep on Pioneering, you have plenty of folks interested in what you offer! Bon Appetite.

Great point, and I appreciate your point. However, ignoring can also suppress emotions that are not healthy nor truthful , but you are correct, and I do delete and block some and will continue to monitor MY channel :) I'm always amazed what folks wills say behind the computer screen they would never say to your face. LOL

(Right. A Therapist chimes in! Get ready for world-problem-solving pronouncements. What she is saying, in essence, is that if we give attention to poaching our chicken breasts, what we will get is . . . more poached chicken breasts. Profound! But finally, someone gets fed up with all this ass-licking bullshit and says what she thinks:)

Wtf is wrong with you? .....There is a comment section here for a reason......It does not say complements only......People are going to tell you what they think when you put your sht out there..... And you do need some criticism..... It doesn't mean we want you to read and respond, frankly, I don't care if you read this OR respond. I am commenting on that video, because you were going to take my time to watch it. .... Like I said, have you ever watched a cooking video?.....A cooking show?..... They do not spend all their time walking back-and-forth to get sht.....It is there and ready......And you get defensive when ppl point out flaws..... Why don't you just take it as a learning opportunity, vs saying you didn't ask for anyone's opinion. You DID ASK when you allow comments on your video..... This is a public forum. Not just for compliments, not just for your fans, but for everyone. If you don't like it, disable the damn comments!

(Oddly enough, there is no response. Did the tuber go storming off, or what?)

This crow is completely CRAZY!

The crow I recently encountered on Lafarge Lake was acting very strangely. It was standing on the banks rattling its beak menacingly, and raucously cawing its head off. Periodically he (she? I can't really tell them apart) would charge at one of the mallards which was peacefully sitting at the lakeside. I've never seen behaviour like that before. If it were nest-guarding, which crows are notorious for doing, I think it would have been dive-bombing me and all the other (many) passersby in the park. But he just stood there, sometimes strutting back and forth, making the loudest, ugliest crow sounds I have ever heard.

The ducks, strangely enough, stood their ground. One was scared into the water, but after that, they stood or sat stodgily, as if to say, we won't tolerate this interloper. Ducks are placid, but they also have a certain gravitas. They are not easily perturbed. Any goose would have made short work of this crow, lowering its neck, hissing and charging at him, but the ducks just had a sort of "we shall not be moved" attitude.

But why try to scare off ducks? How could a duck ever reach a crow's nest, and what sort of interest would it have even if it could? There are plenty of ground-dwelling predators capable of climbing trees and picking off tender crow fledglings. Raccoons, skunks, weasels and ferrets, even squirrels have been known to raid nests. And let's not start on the eagles, hawks and falcons, and even the owls which could easily swoop down and snatch a whole nest.

But this crow was attacking ducks. Placid mallards which didn't want their afternoon snooze disturbed. Ducks who were just waiting for the next handout, the inevitable, forbidden tourist-feed. 

I had a passing thought that the crow was injured, but he seemed so able-bodied, so muscular and glossy (thus my use of "he", though I could be wrong) that it didn't make sense. He did not stir from the banks in all the time we spent at the lake, photographing Bosley and Belinda, our favorite duck couple. When we left, he was still cawing raucously and walking back and forth. Strutting, rather, aggressively. My only conclusion is that he saw birds, and birds meant threat, so he was going to get rid of them forthwith. 

BOX OPENING: my new Dam troll!

I am not letting the reborn community get ahead of me! Here is my version of a box opening with Frodo, my new Dam troll.

The worst word in the world

I was going to hitch these thoughts on the end of my racism post, but then started thinking about it some more and thought there was more going on. More going on than just an unpleasant memory.

My Dad could be a son-of-a-bitch, but I suppose he had some good qualities. When not drinking and expounding like some hot-air-bag buffoon, he could say some things that were reasonably intelligent. The man used his brain, and his generation, with his level of education, were not expected to do that. 

What I liked most about my Dad was the way he hated Americans. Well, not hated exactly. He could not fathom why they acted the way they did. He had been born in England, grew up in a little fishing village called Leigh-on-Sea, and never quite lost that scruffy English street urchin thing, having to go out and make a living at age thirteen. Like the Dad in Angela's Ashes, which rattled a few memories for me, his father appeared only sporadically, joined the army, was booted out, worked a bit, mostly haunted the pubs, and was sometimes violent.

But back to the American bit. I don't know if this was originated by him or by Mark Twain or somebody else, but sometimes he would expound on some particularly idiotic turn of American political events, roll his eyes heavenwards and exclaim, "The land of the free, and the home of the slave." His version of the Star-Spangled Banner (which he sometimes sang at the dinner table) was, "O say can you see/Any bedbugs on me?" Irreverant was no word for it. 

But I will never forget the most terrifying, and perhaps the most profound thing he ever said, when he was fairly drunk but in a reasonably benevolent mood, not in one of his fist-thudding rages. He was rambling on about something, then fixed me with his glittering eye and said, "Do you know what the worst word in the world is?"

I thought he meant cursing, and kept thinking, shit, fuck, goddamn, but I couldn't say those words out loud. 

"The worst. The very worst word you can say or write or think of."

Bitch. Asshole. Christ?

He sort of crooked his finger and made me get in really close so he could say it low. But he said it. 

"Nigger."

I flinched. I knew that word was terrible, that I never said it and was not supposed to say it. My mother had told me rather casually that they used the word all the time when she was growing up and didn't see anything wrong with it. But my mother was born in 1915.

I didn't ask why it was the worst word in the world, but I didn't have to because he was about to expound on it. 

"Nigger. Nigger is the worst word in the world, and I'll tell you why. It means one person owns another person."

It took me a minute to realize he was referring to slavery. And it was appropriate, because nigger is a slave word, a plantation word, a word to describe a thing that can be owned, bought and sold. Placed on the auction block. And when those ran out, there were lots of others to be captured and shipped over, an industry in itself, the importing of essential goods. 

This was difficult for a ten-year-old kid to contemplate, the concept of one person owning another person. It was horrible, demeaning, dehumanizing. Little middle-class white girls growing up in 1960s suburbia didn't use language like that because it might evoke something demonic. Nigger meant you were farm machinery, replaceable and even renewable through breeding, and that your purpose was to make agriculture possible, thus founding a country which insisted it was the greatest nation on earth. Then not being able to use the white drinking fountain. It was crazymaking, a blank wall of contradiction.

That communities grew up, vibrant communities, out of the ashes of slavery makes my scalp prickle with awe. That those communities grew up right outside my door makes my head spin. But when I realize that Chatham's significant part in the Underground Railroad was never even mentioned in all my years in school, it fills me with a sickness, and casts a pall over the brightest sunshine of my life.

Kitty, get DOWN!

Subtitled: "You think YOUR cat is bad."

Amethyst geode

Deer crossing a river

A few notes. These are not "deers". They are deer. The splashing of the river is about half the video, so if you can't get the audio to play please click to go full-screen with it. Just a few seconds of loveliness.

Black lives: the Underground Museum

I can't begin to tell you how much it sickens me to see what strikes me as a great resurgence of racism - and not just in our neighbors to the south. How we love to say things like, "Oh, that's just in the States," or "our history was so peaceful,"  conveniently forgetting the apartheid of residential schools which literally stole children from their parents and held them hostage. We never heard about these things at all, of course, and I think if we had, we would have thought in terms of what an advantage it was for these poor underprivileged "Indian" children to get a good solid Catholic education.

Blindness. I don't want to start. Chatham, where I grew up, seemed for some reason to have a disproportionate number of black people. Disproportionate? That means five per cent rather than none! But black culture was a presence, if not from the citizens of Chatham we lived and worked with, then from Detroit, that source of vibrant new musical culture along with alarming rumbles of unrest.

But there was something else about Chatham. I think my schooling was lily-white until I got into Grade 9 or so (not that it had anything to do with the parallel social movement of integration, no sir!). Then suddenly there were black kids, maybe two or three in a class of thirty. Compared to the zero of before, with all those classes of kids at the Dutch reform school who seemed to be universally blonde and blue-eyed, it was a lot.

It was a confusing time. Black culture was cool, we thought, but we wanted the "good part", Diana Ross and the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, Afros and "black is beautiful", and wanted to leave out the ugly part, the violence, the riots. Of course I knew about Martin Luther King - he was my hero - but I was beginning to have just sprinklings of awareness of other leaders with names like Huey Newton, Bobby Seale and Malcolm X. Meantime, something seismic happened on a more intimate level that rocked our school, and everyone's school. It was a song by a folk singer named Janis Ian, and it was about a white girl dating a black boy. It was called Society's Child, and the refrain was, "I can't see you any more. . . " The girl's mother would not even let the boyfriend in the house. To me, the most chilling line of all is the very last one: "I don't want to see you any more." Her mother's ugly mentality has won a mean little victory.

This song caused a furiosa of response, but it was all underground. Girls huddled around their lockers whispering to each other about it. "Did you hear it? That song? . . .I heard it. . .yeah, it's true, isn't it." Not one person thought the song was inaccurate.

I don't know why were such idiots about it, why we didn't discuss it openly in school, but then we never discussed anything important in school. This was never more apparent than when my mother started talking to me one day about her favorite history book, Romantic Kent by Victor Lauriston. "There's a chapter in it about the Underground Railroad. Chatham is one of the termination points, you know."

About the what?

Once my mother had explained to me, more or less, what the Underground Railroad was, and that Chatham was instrumental in helping escaped and fugitive slaves to settle and build new homes and create communities, a question screamed in my head: why didn't we learn about this in school?

We learned nothing of the Underground Railroad. Either it didn't occur to the school board to put it on the curriculum, or they were embarrassed by it. Chatham had a famous son, Fergie Jenkins, a nationally-known champion ball player, and he was a real nice colored man. Wasn't that enough? We had Mahalia Jackson who came all the way to Chatham to sing for us, but, oops, Mahalia wasn't allowed to stay at the William Pitt Hotel because the management was sure she would be "much more comfortable" in another hotel across town.

I see racism minimized now, I see people writing in comments sections (and why do I still read them?) about how it has all been blown out of proportion, how black people should just forget the past and suck it up and be glad they live in the greatest country in the world (and you know the country I mean, and it isn't Canada). Unfortunately they omit one little fact: that greatest country in the world was founded on the backs of slaves. The United States would not, could not exist without slavery. Slaves were the engine that made the entire machine run. If by force, if by theft of liberty, then what was the damage? They could always go over there and get some more, because slaves were a renewable resource.

But why do those black folks still insist on making such a fuss? I have seen diatribes about indentured workers, Irish mostly, and about how they were treated "just as badly as the blacks". It's the same mentality that whittles down the Holocaust: "but lots of other groups were just as persecuted", "other atrocities took place in history and nobody notices", and maybe just maybe they got that infamous six million count wrong.

I try not to write these days, I really do, because when I do this is what comes out. Truly, I'd like to only post silly videos and animations and things I enjoy doing, because none of it makes one jot of difference anyway. I have almost no readers, and I keep this going only for something to do. I have had weird surges in readership that then died, and I don't understand the surges and I don't understand the dying. I guess I will keep on as long as it amuses me, but there are certain things that will never amuse me, and atrocity against humanity is definitely at the top of the list. 

Underground Railroad Museum, Chatham, Ontario

The Three Stooges - Swingin' The Alphabet (1938)

B—A—bay
B—E—be
B—I—bicky-bi—B—O—bow
Bicky—bi—bow—B—U—boo
Bicky—bi—bow—boo

C—A—say
C—E—see
C—I—sicky-sigh—C—O—sow
Sicky—sigh—sow—C—U—sue
Sicky—sigh—sow—sue

D—A—day
D—E—dee
D—I—dicky-die—D—O—doe
Dicky—die—doe—D—U—due
Dicky—die—doe—due

F—A—fay
F—E—fee
F—I—ficky-fi—F—O—foe
Ficky—fi—foe—F—U—fu
Ficky—fi—foe—fu

G—A—jay
G—E—gee
G—I—gicky-gi—G—O—joe
Jicky—ji—joe—G—U—jew
Jicky—ji—joe—jew

Rat-da-da-da

H—A—hay
H—E—he
H—I—hicky-high—H—O—ho
Hicky—high—ho—H—U—who
Hicky—sigh—ho—who

J—A—jay
J—E—gee
J—I—jicky-jigh—J—O—joe
Jicky—jigh—joe—J—U—jew
Jicky—jigh—joe—jew

K—A—kay
K—E—key
K—I—kicky-kigh—K—O—co
Kicky—kigh—co—K—U—coo
Kicky—kigh—co—coo

L—A—lay
L—E—lee
L—I—licky-lie—L—O—low
Licky—lie—low—L—U—lou
(Curly’s a dope)

M—A—may
M—E—me
M—I—micky-my—M—O—moe
Micky—my—mow—M—U—moo
Micky—my—mow—moo

EXPLANATION. Somebody on a TV horror movie Facebook page (Svengoolie) said I was dissing the Stooges, which means I am a "hater". What I said was, comedy is funnier when it's funny. For this, someone posted one of those red-faced "rage" stickers at me. I am now a  troll! I am no longer welcome to post on their page because I don't love every movie they show. And I am not saying the Three Stooges weren't funny, I've had convulsions over their lowest-of-the-low gags, but their movies weren't particularly good, and most were awful. They didn't have Curly or even Shemp in them, so the third man was always weak. They had run out of steam and ideas. So comedy is funnier when it's funny. This clip is from when they were funny, or at least appealingly odd.

But that Svengoolie guy, boy, talk about oversensitive.

My favorite 87-year-old sex symbol

Fatboyslowdown!

I suppose I should add a note of explanation to this, perhaps my favorite gif of all time. And yes, I know I've posted it before, but can you ever see this enough times? And isn't it better just the way it is? Let's just say this guy is caught up in the spirit of Dancing with the Stars, only he can't dance. Actually, this was filmed during the height of that Toronto Blessing/Holy Laughter/Kenneth Hagin/rolling-on-the-floor ("carpet time") movement which had people mooing, bleating and crowing like roosters in church, all to express - I guess - the glory of God. This guy prefers to spin around in circles, stomping all the way. 

Like this.

"Do shadows hide your beauty?" Your future in a bar of soap

Camay wasn't a soap so much as a state of mind. Think of it. There was nothing in this product that wasn't in a million other kinds of soap products. What they were selling here was an idea. No, what they were selling here was a future. A literal metamorphosis, not from a bad-smelling woman to a nice-smelling woman, but from a dour and unwanted single girl to a Bride. Almost every Camay commercial I could find (and I recently unearthed a cache of them from the Internet Archive, which I then turned into this series of gifs) features this remarkable morphing into a married state, which to our eyes seems creepy and even laughable, but to young women in the '50s must have been. . . remarkable.

I think I've used Camay once or twice - or was it Pond's? At any rate, it was about as refreshing as rubbing a pound of Crisco on my face. I now use the plainest stuff I can find, only a step up from lye and ashes, with no scent and no cold cream or other yucky dreck. But Camay was obsessed with cold cream, and its manic little jingle proclaimed it like some revelation: "There's cold cream now in Camay! There's cold cream now in Camay!"

Earlier ads were a little more melancholy-sounding: "Do shadows hide your beauty?" (though with the same irritating three-note tune - their jingle-writer must have been lazy). "Your beauty" is interesting, isn't it, because it just assumes you're beautiful, or you WILL be beautiful once you get those grungy shadows off your face by using Camay. This was a rare case of a product with a woman announcer, though  her voice was almost contralto-sounding, with a la-di-da, privileged, finishing school diction that's hard to describe. People just don't speak that way any more.

Having worked my brain off making these gif compilations, and they really do take quite a bit of time and effort, suddenly I want to share the actual ads, which are minor works of art and which jack the lid off the strange and contradictory values of the 1950s. You used this soap so you could attract someone and get married, so that then you wouldn't have to worry about attracting someone any more and could just sort of stop using it. Or maybe just use the cheaper stuff.

Looks very jolly, doesn't it?

Tortie talks!