Barred Owl: BONUS HOOTS!

Yes - I finally found a good hooting video with gorgeous visuals. 

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💋WILLIAM FREAKING SHATNER!!😻

It's WILLIAM FREAKING SHATNER in an early performance on Playhouse 90. Shatner was pretty much a journeyman actor in those days, but always employed, before Captain Kirk came along and his career exploded like one of those star thingies (supernova?). But unfortunately, it was cancelled after a mere three seasons, and the bottom dropped out for a while. He was stuck doing Loblaws commercials and depressing bits in forgettable movie-of-the-week things. But Kirk would rise again when the movies came along - not the first one, which was a disappointment and almost brought the whole thing to a screeching halt - but the SECOND one, The Wrath of Khan, which as we all know is one of the best adventure movies ever made. Kirk is Starbuck in this one, hunting the mighty whale with the Latino accent we remembered from all those Maxwell House ads (and the "real Corinthian leather", whatever THAT is). What I like best of all is that I am STILL WATCHING WILLIAM SHATNER, every single week, hosting a show called The UnXplained (with is self-unexplanatory). It's not as fun to watch as Weird or What?, a series from ten years ago when he was still limber enough to ride in on a Segway or a horse and do some comedy bits between stories. But it's still a treat to see a 91-year-old LEGEND whose career started before I was born, who really never did hit the unemployment line even when he had to live in his camper for a while. And the cherry on the sundae is that he's not above a sort of good-natured self-parody. AND HE'S CANADIAN, guys - does it get any better? He's a Jewish Lithuanian from Montreal. All that, and such a fox!

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What's that sound? Barred owl of British Columbia

When I first heard this sound, very late at night when I was sitting at my desk, I had no idea what it was.



I should have been used to weird wails in the night: the first time I heard a pack of coyotes massing together for a group howl, it made my scalp prickle. This wasn't the primal ascending moan of a wolf howl, but a high, falsetto trilling. punctuated by the odd husky bark that could NOT have been made by a dog. Hearing a dozen or so of them trilling and even squealing made me wonder if I was hearing things. I had to look up the sound of them on YouTube, of course. Coyotes do not sound AT ALL like the ridiculous noises from cowboy movies (likely made by wolf howls or even mastiff groans). REAL coyotes make weird, otherworldly, scalp-prickling soprano trills.

But this was different.



This was an almost fake-sounding owl call, a "too-whit, too-whooo!" like in an old cartoon. Then it got louder, then suddenly escalated into the most bizarre, apelike jungle sounds, and I knew I was hearing something wild.

When I looked out my window, I saw flashes of white diving and swooping between the treetops. I knew this was no kid pretending to be an owl.



And though I could not believe the jungle-sounding quality of the calls, I had to conclude we either had escaped chimpanzees, or owls in the back yard. I had to look up "Owls of British Columbia" on the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology (the BEST WEBSITE EVER, about anything at all - simple, elegant, beautiful to look at or spend time in, and PACKED with readily-summoned information, including what they eat, where they flock, and a dozen or so sounds each species produces) to make the match.



But it wasn't my last encounter with the spooky, magnificent barred owl of British Columbia. Walking along a very familiar stretch of trail which cut through my suburban neighborhood, I saw that telltale swooping flash of white. But it was daytime! Didn't owls sleep all day? Not this one, apparently. It looked to be a juvenile, still somewhat fuzzy of feather. I didn't have my camera (as I did a couple of years ago when I miraculously happened upon a small family of pileated woodpeckers on the same trail), and I think ran back to get it and feared I had missed the moment.

But then there was movement in the bushes.



On the forest floor, there was the owl, ripping a small dead animal into strips and devouring it with gusto. It was quite fascinating to watch. He or she had obviously been hunting during the day, and - even more miraculous - wasn't at all afraid of me, though I was only a few steps away. I never did get a good shot of it before it finished the daytime snack and flew off with a wide-winged swoop. I have since heard their weird cries during the day, and have even tried the trick of imitating their calls to attract them (though it never worked for me). But they are still a mysterious, wingy presence in my back yard, one owl calling to another or having three- or four-owl conversations from different parts of the woods.



I have one more barred owl story, and it isn't even mine. My daughter-in-law is hardly a bird watcher, in fact she is wary of them ever since seeing that Alfred Hitchcock movie as a kid. Late one night she heard a strange flapping noise in the back yard. Something had landed! She described it as a "great huge honkin' BIRD in the yard", which had landed on the top bar of the swing set to take a breather from the rigors of hunting. Then it took off and sailed away.



Here's the thing. I've never truly captured the sounds or sights of these birds, and even going on YouTube was a bit frustrating. But then I struck gold. There is an ENTIRE CHANNEL dedicated to owl sounds, and I did find splendid examples of those hoots and cries - BUT, the channel has still pictures only, and as usual I had to have visuals! So I cobbled together some photos - which I didn't take, unfortunately, but they do convey some of the eerie, mystical presence of these night birds.

So if you play the YouTube videos at the same time that you look at my gifs and stills, you will get some idea of the magic of these things with their wizardly swoops and whoops.

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OBITUARY BLUES: am I undone?

 

Late December. Maybe it wasn’t the best time of year to be looking for this. But after her mother-in-law’s death at the first of the month, something happened to her that she didn’t expect: she began to be curious about her own mother, who was about the same age.

To say that there was family estrangement was like saying the Titanic had a bit of a leak. It had gone on for years, but over time the smoking ruins seemed to be farther and farther behind her.

Over forty years, her husband’s family became her family. And she was welcomed in. His mother became her Mum: honest, practical, funny, and in her own no-nonsense way, accepting and loving.

When she died at age 96, a peaceful death that almost anyone would envy, it caused a strange reaction in her. She wondered where her own Mum was. Meaning, the one who’d given birth to her and raised her with sublime indifference while favoring her eldest two siblings.



All through her childhood she had been haunted by the feeling that her parents had not wanted her, that she had been a mistake, someone they were ashamed of and would rather not have around. Later, her feelings of estrangement were vigorously denied and shouted down as “wrong”. It simply did not happen. She had wonderful parents. What was wrong with her? She had to stop feeling this way, now. This was true of most of her feelings, which apparently she was not allowed to have.

Then there was Garth, her older brother, a brilliant person who became more and more odd as years went by. He ended up on the streets of Toronto, a schizophrenic, and died tragically young in a fire.

Garth had been the only one who had listened. But then, there was something wrong with him too, something the family just couldn’t acknowledge or forgive.

It probably wasn’t a good idea to google her mother’s name, particularly since her obituary immediately sprang up like a ghost from the grave.




Remembering her Mum-in-law’s gracious, inclusive obituary, she wasn’t expecting it to be anything like that. But she couldn’t in her wildest dreams have imagined what she now saw in front of her.

She read it.

She read it again. Then, again.

She wasn’t in it.

Wasn’t there, wasn’t there at all, no nor any of her kin (no husband, no kids, no grandkids!): so apparently she had never been born, never been raised, didn’t in fact exist at all.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. Garth wasn’t there! Garth had been stricken from the record as well. Photoshopped. Edited out.



One wonders how anyone can possess the ruthlessness to pretend that two of their children never existed. Perhaps her elder sister had written this (but certainly not against her mother’s wishes), and surgically removed Garth just to devastate and wound her further. Her two oldest siblings were proudly mentioned, along with “two grandchildren” (though she really had four) and no great-grandchildren (nicely negating the four of them, too).

She could not think of one single thing Garth had done in his whole life to intentionally hurt the family. For that matter, her own attempts to try to explain the abuse that had nearly destroyed her had been completely subverted, turned around, and treated like a mean-spirited attack on them with absolutely no grounds: a pack of lies told to deliberately damage and destroy them.

I did it just to make them feel horrible, she thought. I was like that, wasn’t I? Vindictive, hurtful, a destroyer of family happiness and harmony. It was intentional meanness, complete fabrication. I was the perpetrator of horrible, unforgiveable abuse.

If even one of them had taken maybe one minute, one second to listen to me and try to understand, would my frantic efforts have escalated the way they did?



When everything is turned upside-down like that, and inside-out, it can make you feel a little crazy. To say the least. It was a craziness that took a devastating toll.

And now. . . now, well, it looks like that particular problem is neatly solved because I’m not even here! But Garth makes me feel so much worse. The only thing he ever did to the family was to be ill, with an illness that surely must have been caused by the twisted reality of a family who lived in its own little universe of truth and lies. In a moment of rare vulnerability, I remember my sister once said, “Garth went crazy for all of us.” What had happened to that tiny crack of openness to the truth? Why did it slam shut with such vehemence?



I always suspected my parents were ashamed of him, ashamed of his illness and of what became of him, and secretly wished he would just disappear. And now their most fervent wish had come true. If you can pretend the problematic elements in your family never existed, if you can apply an eraser to the parts of it you are uncomfortable with, it’s ultimate power, kind of like God: bringing people into the world; taking them away again.



An obituary is a public life-record, an attempt to encapsulate many decades into a single paragraph. My family must have a very strange notion of economy of expression.

There is NOTHING my children could do to make me erase them like this: if my son were an axe-murderer serving a life sentence, if he had accused me of being a heroin addict or a whore, if he had attacked me and hurt me in the worst way he could think of, I would never pretend he had never existed, never erase him from the permanent record of my life.

Because he is my son.

She looked at her mother-in-law’s obituary again, wondering if there was such a thing as Providence, after all. It was just possible. She had been thrown out of the family – no, unmade! – but landed safely in another family where that kind of insanity didn’t exist. No, not “landed”, but walked out of one, and into the other. Of her own free will.

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The Troll Doll Channel: POP goes the TROLL DOLL!

Pop goes the troll doll - yet another "grumpy" (sigh - I said no more grumpies a long time ago, but - ). I try to put this new arrival into context with the entire collection, with which I surround myself. Trollandia is a lot saner, safer and more fun than the world at large.

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CLOWN OF MY NIGHTMARES: It's Super Circus!

Oh my God, CLOWNS. It's hard for me to believe that clowns were once seen as the happy, jolly, fun creatures that brought joy and happiness to children of all ages. Ye GODS. This one is particularly repulsive, with his obnoxious bellowing of the disturbing command, "Make Pappy Happy!" Clowns were never meant to be seen up close, however. They ran around making mischief while the three-ring circus setup was in a lull period, so that the audience would be distracted by their antics while they moved the elephants around. Seen from a GREAT distance, such as three or four miles, they may have looked. . . OK. Or not. But TV was the first time we saw clowns in closeup, I mean CLOSE closeup, usually selling ssomething, and it wasn't a pretty sight. But they became more wildly popular than ever, for some reason, breaking through big pieces of paper, gesticulating wildly, pushing whoever the sponsor was (in this case, "KELLLLLOGGGGGGS!!") and making the kiddies repeat the name over and over again, as in "Izz vee not zee Super Race?" The latter half of this clip is nearly as bizarre, as the spangly majorette-looking lady is FACING THE WRONG WAY as she "leads" the band. The band is pretty good, and may well be a military band moonlighting to pick up a few extra bucks. This was not, after all, a real circus, but just a TV show that filmed, probably, an hour or so a week. But let us not forget during that sacred hour that the sponsor for this show, the entire raison d'etre, the Means of Being, the alpha and omega, was KELLOGG'S! K, E, double-L . . .oh, you know the rest.

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🌺SPACED-OUT: Hippies on the Enterprise!🌷

This has got to rate as ONE of the worst episode of the original Star Trek series, along with the half-white/half-black guys and the Jolly Green Giant called Apollo (a. k. a. "appalling"). For some reason, almost everyone names Spock's Brain as one of their worst, when I'd likely put it in the top five. Why the worst, when it was an eerie foreshadowing of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock? Spock's "katra" had to be united with his physical being, which was walking around in a white bathrobe looking mystical. In this one, instead of sticking his katra into Bones' head for safekeeping, Bones actually PUTS SPOCK'S BRAIN BACK IN HIS SKULL and hooks everything up, later regretting he hooked up his mouth. So what is so bad about Spock's Brain? Why does no one else see it? Anyway, THIS one, Return to Eden, is pure kitsch, but good for a laugh, especially that part where the crew is bopping along to the music and Spock plays his space zither to the accompaniment of a bicycle wheel. I REACH, man! 

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Meghan Markle is a "HORRIBLE HUMAN"!

Monday, Sep 19th 2022

Australian senator brands Meghan Markle a 'horrible human' with a 'terrible influence on Prince Harry' and declares they are 'awful, revolting people' in an extraordinarily scathing live TV rant

Senator Hollie Hughes says she's 'sick' of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle
Tensions within royal family continue in wake of the Queen's death 10 days ago
Prince Harry and Meghan were 'uninvited' to a state reception for world leaders
Senator supports snub, arguing the couple distanced themselves from royals
She blamed Meghan for the couple's estrangement from royals in recent years

By Kylie Stevens For Daily Mail Australia

An Australian Liberal senator has unleashed a brutal attack on Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, saying she's sick of the pair and labelling them 'awful, revolting people.'

Hollie Hughes didn't hold back as she weighed in on ongoing tensions between the royals following the death of Queen Elizabeth II 10 days ago, aged 96.

As billions around the world prepare for the Queen's funeral within hours, all eyes will be on the royals after it was revealed Prince Harry and Meghan were 'uninvited' to a state reception for world leaders held at Buckingham Palace on Sunday.

The couple were reportedly 'baffled' by the decision to exclude the pair from the event only for 'working royals.

But Sky News host Chris Smith believes Harry and Meghan shouldn't be baffled as they had put themselves in that situation, prompting Senator Hughes to launch into an extraordinary tirade.

She blamed Meghan for the couple's estrangement from the royal family and believes Prince Harry will live to regret it one day.

'I think he's made an awful error and I think she's had a terrible influence over him,' she said on Monday afternoon.

'She's just a horrible human.

'It's absolutely disgraceful.

'I don't know what's happening with the book he has done.

'Her podcasts apparently they're going through them now trying to take out parts where she said not particularly kind things about the Queen.

'They're awful, revolting, revolting people and I absolutely think they shouldn't be invited to this and I hope they're not invited to a lot of other things.'

Senator Hughes believes Prince Harry will one day regret the 'awful mistake' of marrying Meghan Markle and cutting off ties with the crown.

Federal senator Hollie Hughes (pictured) made it very clear in her rant she's no fan of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle

'I'm sick of both of them,' Senator Hughes said.

'I sort of long for the day I hope Harry rolls over and takes one look and thinks 'what have I done' and comes to his senses and moves back across the pond.'

Senator Hughes is surprised at the amount of invites Duke and Duchess of Sussex have got to official events in the wake of the Queen's death.

'They wanted a private life, they no longer wanted to be part of the royal family in the sense they were,' she said.

'They've moved themselves across to the US and taken every opportunity they can to take a swipe at the Queen but also the entire monarch and the royal family and the role it plays.'

'They wanted a lower profile, they didn't want this sort of life for their children. They seem upset their children might not get the HRH, which is a little bit strange to me.'

Commentator Caroline di Russo agreed.

'When they decided they didn't want to be senior royals, they wanted their privacy and they wanted their independence, well there are consequences,' she said.

'We've been hearing this sniping of them not getting exactly what they want, well you didn't want the duty, you didn't want the responsibility, well you don't get the other stuff that comes with it.'

Senator Hughes is no stranger to controversy.

She was previously subjected to a vile slur in Parliament when Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe yelled at her across the chamber, 'at least I keep my legs shut'.

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CONSIDER HER WAYS: a Queen Bee Detective Story

Can I piece this thing together, or should I just leave it in its natural pieces?

Years ago, when the internet was still somewhat Jurassic and YouTube was all new to me, I kept trying to find something, anything, about an episode of a sci-fi TV show I saw in the '60s. Wasn't sure if it was Twilight Zone, Outer Limits or (my personal favorite, the one that scared the bejeezus out of me) One Step Beyond.

I don't think I even saw the show, in fact. My much-older sister was reading a description of it out of TV Guide. "A woman doctor awakens to discover that she has become extremely obese." My sister said, "Oh, that sounds like me." I didn't even know it at the time, but she was pregnant and hiding it from the world, including me.

But that wisp of memory is ALL, I swear, that I had to go on.

I did find this on a message board, and thought: I think, I think she's talking about the same thing:

Does anybody remember an episode of Twilight Zone or Outer Limits about a Queen Bee? It isn't the one with the sexy queen bee trying to breed with a human male. This was about a woman who wakes up and discovers she is enormously fat because she is a queen bee and she is never allowed to do anything but breed and be fed. Program, episode and names of actors would be appreciated.

Update: Zzzzzz is the one about the sexy queen bee. I'm looking for the one about the morbidly obese queen bee.

Answers

Best Answer: Outer Limits: Zzzzzz

Season 1 Episode 18

Actors: Vic Perrin, Bob Johnson, Ben Wright, Robert Culp, Robert Duvall

It wasn't the Outer Limits, and I believe it was in black and white. I can see the actress, but I can't think of her name. She did a lot of stuff in the 60's and 70's. 

Sorry to be of no help. Good luck.

It wasn't Zzzzzz, I checked on YouTube. It wasn't even Twilight Zone or Outer Limits or any of those, I obsessively checked the synopsis on every single episode and watched the ones that were available, and no obese doctor. So I gave up. Every so often, every few years I mean, I'd take another half-hearted stab at it. THEN!

Then, just tonight, I found this - this description on IMDB, and bingo-bango.

The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (TV Series)

Consider Her Ways (1964)

Plot Summary

Dr. Jane Waterleigh wakes to find herself in an obese body, having just given birth to her fourth baby, and is called "Mother Orchis" and "Mother 417" by an all-female medical staff. The other Mothers, all of whom are corpulent and much larger than their helpers, the Servitors, tell Jane that there are no men, their only responsibility is to give birth, and Mothers neither read nor write.

Jane, however, remembers her past life as a physician and wife, so two policewomen try to arrest her for "reactionism." The Doctors refuse to surrender her, and send her to sick bay, then to Laura, the historian. Laura explains that all of the men died decades ago, when a Dr. Perrigan developed a virus to control the rat population, but the strain mutated, killing all male humans, but sparing females, who were immune.

Now only women survive, and they are sorted at birth into four classes--Doctors, Mothers, Servitors, and Workers--and raised in learning centers. When Laura tells Jane that she will now receive an hypnotic treatment, a drug-induced amnesia to remove all of her memory, she becomes hysterical, and returns to her earlier world.

She is in the office of Dr. Hellyer, her boss and the Chief of Staff at her hospital, who reminds her that she volunteered to test a new narcotic, Sonadrin, which apparently took her to the fantastic matriarchal world from which she just escaped. She discovers that Dr. Perrigan is a real biologist, who is working on a myxomatosis strain to exterminate brown rats.

She meets Perrigan and tries to convince him to discontinue his project, but he refuses, so she shoots him, lights a fire using all of Perrigan's research notes, and burns down his laboratory. She is tried for murder, but refuses to plead insanity, and insists that her sacrifice is worthwhile, since she is saving humanity from a terrible future.

Then her attorney, Max Wilding, tells her that Perrigan has a son, another Dr. Perrigan, who promises to complete his father's work.

OK THEN! Great episode, based on a short story by John Wyndham (which I now have to find!).  It DOES have termite queen aspects to it (and dear GOD do not get me going on termite queens, those seething bags of - ). But it's gratifying to realize that from that tiny wisp of memory, I have been able to retrieve something this tangible. Hell of a good story, too - too bad I didn't watch it at the time, as it held no interest. But my pregnant sister watched it, chain-smoking Export As with one hand and stuffing Krispy Krunch bars into her mouth with the other.

But here's one more snippet: a review posted on a Hitchcock fan site. Gives a little more insight into this strange and twisted thing. This just makes me want to see it all the more, but I'd have to order it on DVD or something, along with 576 other episodes.

This was a weirdly disturbing episode...but NOT for the reasons presented. In the future, men are dead and the surviving woman have become a single-gender society, with classes and levels organized along the same lines as the Ants. A woman wakes with no memory of who she is...and finds she's a hugely obese, barely mobile woman named "Mother Orchis" who (as a mother) is genetically designed to have babies...and nothing else. She gradually remembers she has a husband (nobody even knows what a 'man' is), can read and write (something Mother Orchis can't do) and was in fact a doctor. The story's pretty facinating (involving mental projection and time travel) but the the whole "No woman is complete without her man!" message has an ugly ring to it. Still, I'm charmed by the effectiveness of the primitive fat-suits and the sight of those huge woman, reclining on couches and eating...being massaged by servants (drones) and existing in this strange society that survived the loss of the other gender and adapted.

POST-MORTEM! I did find the whole episode, in pristine condition, on another video platform called Dailymotion. Also found out I can watch the entire 1960s series of The Outer Limits on it! What is wrong with me? Has it been there all this time? THIS is an ironic twist truly worthy of Hitchcock himself. At any rate, I re-published this thing as an example of the kind of detective-story burrowing you can do on the internet, even if it takes seven or eight years to solve the mystery. And you can see it right now, if you want to (see previous post)! Now that I have finally watched it, it's even more disturbing than I thought. No wonder the "zzzzzz" woman could not forget it.

(Pregnancy update: my fat, chain-smoking sister gave the baby away, and never asked about it again.)

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CONSIDER HER WAYS: The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, 1964

MARRIED LOVE (a user's guide)

This is an oldie-but-goodie (or baddie, depending on your perspective) which I have tried to "blow up" before. This time I think it's legible enough that I don't have to spend an hour trying to do a transcript. OH HOW I WISH I could get hold of an actual copy of this booklet! After all, a Federal Judge has Lifted the BAN on the pamphlet, no doubt deemed obscene by the FDA or FDR or whatever. The address is also entertaining: American Biological Society in New York. No doubt it came in a plain brown wrapper so the postman wouldn't keel over in shock, or your neighbor filch it out of your mail box.  I LOVE the ads at the bottom: EARN MONEY Women DO FURCRAFT WORK AT HOME (furcraft?!); YARN WORLD'S FINEST LOWEST PRICES; SKIN RASH RELIEVED. . . ITCHING STOPPED, and - best of all - HAPPY RELIEF FROM PAINFUL BACKACHE Caused by Tired Kidneys. Well, my kidneys might be tired too, and my back sore, if I followed all the instructions in that little book. 

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🌕GOLDEN HARVEST MOON in Autumn Night Sky

Shot through the bathroom window, late at night. This shouldn't have happened! Haze from forest fires had been turning the sun red for days, but now the MOON - if that was what it was - was the wrong colour as well, almost orange, giving off an eerie light. I grabbed my camera and tried hard to focus, couldn't at all convey what my naked eye was seeing - only a white blob - until I zoomed in - and in -  and - 

To my astonishment, the lunar surface snapped into sharp relief. I could see all those features which my ancient camcorder could not possibly have captured! But here it was. The only problem was, the camera was shaking wildly. My first two takes were a disaster, ending in swearing and falling off the box I was standing on to try to reach the window. On the third or so take, this happened. I at least held the camera steady enough so that the moon wasn't flying all over the place ("The moon was a ghostly galleon, tossed upon cloudy seas" - Mindvault #496). I nearly used a slightly earlier take where the moon was still hiding behind the branches of the trees. But the whole thing just changed moment by moment. The moon is like that, you see. It was like lightning in a bottle, impossible to truly capture. But I did my best. This one is not even going to top 20 views, which is too  bad, because some of my really shitty ones have had hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands, or (in one particularly ludicrous case) over seven million. 

So I put my heart out there, my glowing, vulnerable, moonie heart, the way I see the heavens, the sacrifice of squashing boxes and falling down and swearing. . . but maybe SOMEBODY will see it. And, as an added bonus, now I can see it over and over again, as many times as I want. It could be that I am the only one who will ever truly appreciate it.

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🚘Saturday Night Cruise: They're BACK, Baby - Louder, Faster and Cooler ...

After a two-year absence, the Port Coquitlam Car Show is back - and oh boy, are they cool! The neighborhood cruise is a highlight. The show the next day was MOBBED with people - three or four times the usual crowd - so that it was pretty hard to get anywhere near the cars. But it was plain how much people had missed this annual event. ZOOM-ZOOM!

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BLOGGER'S NOTE. I FINALLY (finally finally) updated my Amazon author page! The photo was ridiculously out of date, and the text was. . . it needed work. Now it looks pretty much the way I want. You can also follow my blog on this page, AND buy all three of my published novels! 

MEGHAN MARKLE: "I was SUCH A FRAUD!"

This has garnered over 500 views on my channel!

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Federal holiday for Queen's funeral

Part two of Shannon's coverage of how the Queen's funeral on September 19 will affect Canadians in the workplace.

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National holiday for Queen's funeral?

My illustrious daughter Shannon Paterson, a 20-year veteran in broadcasting (and winner of numerous awards - not that I'm proud of her!💗) reports on the death of the Queen and what it will mean for Canada, including our national holidays. Though I hadn't planned on it, I've been closely following news of the huge seismic shift taking place, not just in Britain but the entire world, after the loss of the 70-year monarch. I guess I can't help but be swept along in it, more emotionally-invested than I ever thought I would be.

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Mummy "HEARTS" Bentley!

And a couple of new author photos (which my husband took) for my blog, YouTube channel and Amazon Author page, LONG overdue, taken post-pandemic-hairstyle (which I actually like far better than the old short style). Now I'm good for another five years.

I 💗💙💚💛💜BENTLEY!!!

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HAPPY and GLORIOUS: The Life of Queen Elizabeth II

I hadn't planned on doing a tribute to the Queen - but this was therapy for me. 

God Save the Queen

I'm letting Piers Morgan handle this one, as I'm just too emotional to talk about it. And I think he really says it better than anyone I've heard up to now. As the Queen's life ebbed away, a glorious rainbow appeared over Buckingham Palace, arching over the awestruck, weeping crowd. Normally I wouldn't put much store by this sort of thing, but I got a chill when I saw it: yes, that was her final message to the world, a hopeful one, just as God set his bow in the cloud to let us know he would never abandon us, come what may. People die the way they live, and her parting was full of dignity and grace, her spirit strong until the very end. How can she be gone from this world? Wasn't she, in some way, the mother of us all? 

I will share with you a comment I left on the one remaining royal channel I still watch. I have had enough of the sickening melodrama in Montecito and never want to see either of them again. Once again, graciousness and nobility must prevail.

I feel as if I have lost a family member. My memories of the Queen go back as far as early childhood, seeing her portrait on the wall of my kindergarten class, singing God Save the Queen at school assemblies. . .and having to draw the Union Jack with blue and red pencils and a ruler, which was fiendishly difficult! Over the many years her significance in Canada became more ceremonial, but no less heartfelt. She was the mother of us all, or the mother we wish we'd had, steadfast and always there. This woman got us through World War II, for heaven's sake - she walked beside Churchill and Roosevelt and all the other heroes of that challenging time - and was with us through wars and crises and births and deaths and celebrations, including her incredible Jubilee this year. Even through the ultimate trial of losing her beloved, she walked on. My husband likes to say "people die the way they live", and I like to think her passing was dignified and peaceful - and I admire and love the fact that she remained active and a hands-on world leader until the very end. Today I did something a little strange - something I never expected I'd do - I unsubscribed from all the royal channels except this one. I simply could not stand any more negativity and wanted to focus only on the great heart and indomitable spirit of this magnificent woman.

If I can be a boy OR a girl, can I be young OR old? (and other inane questions)

69-Year-Old Dutch Man Identifies As “Age Fluid” And Seeks To Legally Change His Age By 20 Years

By Bernadette Deron
Published November 12, 2018

He claims that his biological age does not reflect his emotional age, and is hurting his chances with women on Tinder.

69-year-old Dutch “positivity guru”, Emile Ratelband, has embarked on a legal battle in the Netherlands to legally make his age 20 years younger.

Born on March 11, 1949, Ratelband wishes to change his birth date to March 11, 1969.

Ratelband is a motivational speaker and trainer in neuro-linguistic programming. He said in a courtroom in the city of Arnhem in the eastern Dutch province of Gelderland recently that he doesn’t feel “comfortable” with his date of birth. Instead, Emile Ratelband wishes to be identified as 20 years his junior. He believes this age change will enable him to go back to work and to achieve more success in his personal life.

The guru feels that he is discriminated against on dating apps like Tinder because of his age. He continues that his advanced age is not reflective of either his character or physical well-being:

“I have done a check-up and what does it show? My biological age is 45 years. When I’m 69, I am limited. If I’m 49, then I can buy a new house, drive a different car. I can take up more work. When I’m on Tinder and it says I’m 69, I don’t get an answer. When I’m 49, with the face I have, I will be in a luxurious position.”

Emile Ratelband added that if transgender people are allowed to undergo a sex change operation and identify as a different gender, then if he identifies as a different age he should thus be allowed to change his date of birth:

“Transgenders can now have their gender changed on their birth certificate, and in the same spirit there should be room for an age change.”

The judge apparently seemed to be somewhat sympathetic to Ratelband’s cause. He noted that the concept of legally changing one’s gender was once completely unthinkable:

“I agree with you,” the judge said, “a lot of years ago we thought that was impossible.”

But the judge also recognized that there would ensue negative consequences from changing one’s date of birth, namely that the process would effectively delete a massive chunk of one’s life.

The judge asked Emile Ratelband what would happen to the early years of his life, from 1949 to 1969, should his request be granted: “For whom did your parents care? Who was that little boy then?”

"With the face I have, I will be in a luxurious position" - E. Ratelband

Emile Ratelband nullified this statement and responded that both his parents are dead. He argued that his legal age-change would actually be good for the government, as he would not seek his pension until he reaches the country’s retirement age again, 20 years down the line.

As ridiculous as the argument sounds, Ratelband’s court battle has actually tested the limits of individual human rights.

Indeed, at the end of the 45-minute court session, Emile Ratelband stated that his case is “really a question of free will.”

The court is scheduled to submit a written ruling in early December 2018.

BLOGGER'S BLOTTER. About this, I just don't know what to say. I'd rather say nothing and call it a day, but feel called upon to say something.

This guy is just squirrely enough to be taken seriously: that is, taken to mean that he means it. With his weaselly sense of influence, of entitlement, of agency, he might just pull this off.

It just means the Gabor sisters were around in the wrong era. Were they here today, they could just keep going back for more and more birth date changes, knocking off the decades, even if it meant having so many brow lifts they became airborne. But surely this is a sardonic view, written from the perspective of someone who has never experienced it.

We're in a position now where we can't say anything at all about any of this, however, which is the only reason I find this interesting at all. Is he really backhanding the whole transgender movement and trying to make it look ridiculous? Or is he - serious? Does he want to jam himself right in behind the thin edge of the wedge driven by transgender pioneers? Thus he'd reap all the rewards, without having to experience all that agony of soul.

If he has one.

Imagine seeing that face on Tinder. I don't care if he says he's 39 or 29 or even 19. He is a holy horror of a man. His website is hilarious: he claims to make "tailor-made presentations" to all sorts of businesses, meaning: look, pay me enough and I will say anything you want, even if I don't mean any of it at all.

A man for our times.

But really. Tinder, and such.  I'm too old for all that, but I hear it's a real meat market, and how fresh IS the meat of a man who is nearly 70?  For that matter, 50 is seriously pushing the best-before date.

No, it MUST be a joke. Or not? I heard about the first successful human head transplant on the news a few months ago, the item read straight, no horrors or commentary or anything. Just: here's what they're doing in the operating room, folks. My stomach dropped at the same time that my hair stood up. I was unable to look it up on the internet to see if it was true.

This guy may want some other organ transplanted. Or is it his brain, after all? Put that ugly pocked head on the body of a 29-year-old, and see how far he gets on Tinder. 

UPDATE. Or downdate or something. While trying to find a thing I posted on transgender regret, which it turned out I ALREADY re-posted in February, I found this ridiculous thing. Haven't heard anything about him since, so he likely either kept taking 20 years off until he turned into a zygote, or else he died of old age. Not nice to fool Mother Nature. She'll get you every time. (And does Tinder even exist any more?)

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

AUSTIN'S DOG BREAD: The WHOLE Story!

The Latest Improvement

SPRATTS PATENT

MEAT “FIBRINE” VEGETABLE

DOG CAKES
(WITH BEETROOT)
USED IN THE ROYAL KENNEL)

TO OUR CUSTOMERS
When ordering our DOG CAKES, please see that every Cake is stamped “SPRATT’S PATENT”, and a x, or they may be served with a Spurious Imitation, containing neither Meat, Dates, Beetroot, Oatmeal, nor the other costly ingredients that make the excellence of ours. These cheap biscuits, being made of unsound and cheap ingredients, the makers are enabled to offer them to the trader at considerably less than ours. Consequently, the trader has a very cogent reason for pushing them, in the increase of profit he thereby gains.

Austin’s Dog Bread.

Dog Food is whatever goes to the building up of the usages of the animal and enables it to perform its functions of life; the development of the muscular tissues depends upon the quality and nature of the blood, which in turn depends upon the nature and quality of the food. Austin’s Dog Bread as now manufactured is unquestionably the best dog food in the market. Its value as a nutrient, and ite effective development of muscle, can be readily seen after a short trial; the desire of the manufacturers to produce the very best dog food has been attained; we have a combination that is perfect; to insure satisfactory results we use only the best materials in its composition: DO NOT BE MISLED BY OTHERS WHO ARE CONSTANTLY EXPERIMENTING. THE AUSTIN DOG BREAD IS NO EXPERIMENT. It is the same bread, made from the same formula used by Austin & Graves for years: it is fed by kennel clubs and dog owners throughout the U. S. with the best results; look for Austin on every cake. Made only by AUSTIN, YOUNG & CO., BOSTON.

DELIGHT YOUR DOG - with KLIX Dog Candy!

 

This started somewhere, as usual - with a very brief clip from an old TV commercial for something called Klix Dog Candy. It was in the background of something else, a video by that Ira Gallen guy (who is such a pest), so I never did see a complete version of it. But I remember thinking: KLIX DOG CANDY? What a weird name for something that doesn't sound like it would be very good for a dog. 

Then I forgot the whole thing, then today I wondered what it was I had forgotten. So I had to start all over again, googling "vintage dog food ads", until I found something that matched up. I ended up with all these lovely sepia-toned ads for dog food, so I thought I'd present them here. The "dog candy" description must have been changed to "dog treat" at some point, but nevertheless, Klix has since ceased to be. That one snippet from the commercial, featuring a bunch of cartoon dogs dancing or marching, so far eludes me, but I swear to God, IF that commercial still exists, I will FIND it!