Like Tom Robbins says, it's never too late to have a happy childhood. Here I present two nostalgic elements from that long-ago time: my troll collection, and Spike Jones!
Monday, March 20, 2023
The Troll Doll Channel: HAWAIIAN LOVE CALL!🌸
Like Tom Robbins says, it's never too late to have a happy childhood. Here I present two nostalgic elements from that long-ago time: my troll collection, and Spike Jones!
Sunday, March 19, 2023
Saturday, March 18, 2023
Is this the WORST troll on eBay?
1960-70 Large Troll Doll
Item Information
Condition:
Used
Price:
US $45.00
Approximately C $61.89
100% positive feedback
Condition:
Used
Price:
US $45.00
Approximately C $61.89
100% positive feedback
Shipping:
US $20.00 (approx C $27.51) eBay International Standard Delivery. See details for shipping
International shipment of items may be subject to customs processing and additional charges.
Located in: Rose Hill, Virginia, United States
Delivery:
Estimated between Wed, 5 Apr and Mon, 1 May to V3B 5V3Seller ships within 4 days after receiving cleared payment.
Please allow additional time if international delivery is subject to customs processing.
No returns accepted.
Wednesday, March 15, 2023
💗🧡💛Ferociousgumby THANKS YOU!💚💙💜
It's is still getting multiple comments a day, but it's a complete coincidence. I had no idea it was "trending" on TikTok, and it still must be or I wouldn't be still getting so many views. I don't want to get caught up in views and subscribers, but being up to 14,800 subs is something I never expected. What's most gratifying is that my granddaughters, particularly Erica, think this is all WAY cool, especially the MTV thing.
Whether they actually use it or not remains to be seen, but just being chosen is - well, something, I guess, out of the multi-millions or even billions of channels and videos (and Gangnam Style long ago surpassed a billion views). So here I try to explain it all, or at least talk about it. I've kept this blog for more than ten years and barely know if people read it, but I do get comments, several a week, usually from VERY old posts that people must have googled up. I also google MYSELF up quite frequently. When I do an image search, half the time images from my own blog posts come up. Which is kind of strange, but not for the internet.
Sunday, March 12, 2023
25 Ways in Which We Use Asbestos (and Dangerous Things made of Celluloid!)
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I think these are absolutely gorgeous! I've tried cutting them up into little pieces, but it takes forever. So I just enlarged a couple of them. Aside from marvelous life lessons on how to and how NOT to play cricket, we learn that while celluloid is horribly dangerous, asbestos is just fine and is in fact a miracle fibre that can be used to fireproof, insulate, make oven mitts, etc. (until miners began to die in appalling numbers due to asbestos-choked lungs). I myself played with asbestos back in the day, with a type of modelling clay not unlike papier-mache. You took this powdery grey stuff and mixed it with mucilege (what we used to call "school glue"), and behold, a nice mushy modelling material out of which you could make nifty things like ash trays. Speaking of dangerous! I remember grey dust flew up out of the powder and drifted and hung in the air, where we undoubtedly inhaled it without a care. Reminds me of how medical science is now discovering that talcum powder isn't good for you. OH REALLY? For generations, newborn infants inhaled this powdered mineral stuff, and no one even thought about it. Johnson & Johnson is now facing zillion-dollar lawsuits, and their baby powder is now made of cornstarch. But why was it ever made of a toxic mineral in the first place?
Saturday, March 11, 2023
MY BIG FAT GREY SQUIRREL!
Why is it grey squirrels are so much cuter than the blackies? The silver-grey fur, the white ring around the eyes, the FAT FAT lush silver tail, and their habit of looking right at you as you film them foraging. . . I can't stay mad at them, even as they drain all my bird feeders.
Tuesday, March 7, 2023
Harry and Meghan: Watching paint dry
CRAIG BROWN: News just in from Harry and Meghan's
new hometown of Montecito... yes, watching paint dry CAN save the world
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex
are said to be mulling over an invitation to the King’s Coronation in May.
A statement on behalf of the couple confirmed that
they have been emailed about the event but it’s not yet clear if they’ll
accept. And that’s the news. The time is three minutes past eight.
March 7: The
Duke and Duchess of Sussex are said to be mulling over the a la carte menu at
an out-of-town restaurant near their home in
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March 8: The
Duke and Duchess of Sussex are said to be mulling over whether to go out or
stay in. A statement on behalf of the couple confirmed that they have been
involved in discussions about the relative benefits of the two options.
March 9:
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are said to be watching paint dry. A statement
on behalf of the couple confirmed that they are pursuing their paint-watching
in a spirit of universal unity and reconciliation on behalf of all the
underprivileged people of the world.
March 10:
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are said to be preparing a statement
about how their paint-watching operation is going. In an exclusive interview on
CNN — his first in more than two hours — Prince Harry said: ‘I was never given
the opportunity to watch paint dry in my childhood. It was always like “Oh, no,
no, no, you must be able to find something better to do. You want to do this, you
don’t want to do that.”
‘They tried to make out that the paint would dry
whether or not I watched it. It was, like, brutal. And that’s something that,
as an adult, I’ve struggled to cope with.’
March 11:
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are said to be mulling over an invitation
to watch paint dry at the newly decorated house of their neighbour Oprah
Winfrey in
In an exclusive interview with the entertainment
editor of Psychology Today, the duchess said that over the coming years they
are determined to let their children watch as much paint dry as possible.
‘It’s, like, a very positive experience. It, like,
teaches you that though paint of whatever colour or creed may at first be very,
very wet, so wet it’s like, really, really wet, well, you only have to, like,
wait long enough, and — here’s the amazing thing — it will eventually dry.
‘And to me that’s the most valuable life lesson of
them all.’
March 12:
The Duke and Duchess of
A spokesperson for the couple said: ‘Harry and
Meghan are proud to share their passion for watching paint dry with millions of
others, harnessing their own expertise to push for safer, more inclusive
paint-watching communities around the world.’
Speaking to her friend Gwyneth Paltrow for her
podcast Spending And Caring, Meghan said: ‘Harry and I want to shed light on
paint and continue to watch it dry so as to empower and inspire others to
protect this beautiful, fragile planet we call Earth.’
Prince Harry reveals on the My Best Trauma podcast
that learning to gaze at his own navel has done wonders for his mental health.
‘As a child, I, like, literally didn’t have a
navel, or, if I did, I didn’t know where it was and was certainly not
encouraged to gaze at it.
‘Growing up, I suffered from unconscious bias
against my own navel. I never gave it a chance to speak, so naturally it felt
sidelined.
‘And that’s why Meghan and I are now on a mission
to teach everyone to engage with their navels, and to listen to everything our
navels have to tell us about our shared values.’
News just in: The Duke and Duchess of Sussex announce their new Archewell Nursing Home, dedicated to nursing all kinds of grievance, from the wholly inconsiderable to the very small.
Sunday, March 5, 2023
Tuesday, February 28, 2023
Creepy 1961 Computer Sings DAISY (HAL'S song from 2001)!
Though this is without a doubt the dumbest video I ever made, it has just topped NINE MILLION VIEWS on YouTube, leading to a boom in my subscribers, which now stand at 14,600+. I just put two very old videos together, but many of the thousands and thousands of comments say, "FAKE!" They expect the two videos to be synced up, and I never even tried for that. It would be impossible anyway. But it always gets me how the videos I spent the least time on get the most views. They get into some sort of recommended stream, so that people are mainly directed to the same video and not the better-crafted ones. Strange are the ways of YouTube!
Monday, February 27, 2023
Win-Win-Win: "An easy labor, a slim baby, and the Full Flavor of Winstons!"
BUT. . . then I saw this.
Mothers-to-be smoking for smaller babies
Some women keep smoking through pregnancy just because they want to give birth to a smaller baby, according to British researchers.
By Stephen Adams, Medical Correspondent
3:22PM BST 07 Jul 2011
Even though most women now understand there is “overwhelming evidence” that smoking during pregnancy is harmful to the developing child, they continue to do so, said Professor Nick Macklon of Southampton University.
By Stephen Adams, Medical Correspondent
3:22PM BST 07 Jul 2011
Even though most women now understand there is “overwhelming evidence” that smoking during pregnancy is harmful to the developing child, they continue to do so, said Professor Nick Macklon of Southampton University.
He told the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) in Stockholm: “It is important that people who believe that a smaller baby means an easier birth take into account the increased risk of complicated deliveries in smokers, as well as the risk of disease later in life which goes with low birth weight.”
"Smoking during pregnancy is not just bad for the mother and baby, but for the adult it will grow into."
He and a team at the university’s department of obstetrics and gynaecology have now produced what he called the first “hard evidence” that women who stopped smoking upon discovery they were pregnant, could protect their unborn children from harm.
The study looked at over 50,000 pregnancies in the Southampton area, analysing the birth weight of the babies and comparing this to self-reported smoking behaviour.
Those who continued to smoke through pregnancy had lower weight babies.
The more women smoked the lighter their babies were: those who smoked more than 10 a day had babies weighing some 11oz (300g) less than the average birth weight from a non-smoking mother, of about 7lb 10oz (3.45kg).
However, those who ceased smoking at about the time they conceived were just as likely to give birth to a normal weight baby as those who had never smoked.
He said: “We can now give couples hard evidence that making the effort to stop smoking in the periconceptional will be beneficial for their baby.
“Stopping smoking can ameliorate these detrimental effects.”
This could help change behaviour among smoking mothers, which he said had hardly changed in Britain over the last decade.
Prof Macklon explained that smoking during pregnancy “affects the transportation of nutrients, especially oxygen, across the placenta”.
It was also “reasonable to assume” that some of the 4,000 or so toxins in cigarettes were harmful to foetuses.
"Smoking during pregnancy is not just bad for the mother and baby, but for the adult it will grow into."
He and a team at the university’s department of obstetrics and gynaecology have now produced what he called the first “hard evidence” that women who stopped smoking upon discovery they were pregnant, could protect their unborn children from harm.
The study looked at over 50,000 pregnancies in the Southampton area, analysing the birth weight of the babies and comparing this to self-reported smoking behaviour.
Those who continued to smoke through pregnancy had lower weight babies.
The more women smoked the lighter their babies were: those who smoked more than 10 a day had babies weighing some 11oz (300g) less than the average birth weight from a non-smoking mother, of about 7lb 10oz (3.45kg).
However, those who ceased smoking at about the time they conceived were just as likely to give birth to a normal weight baby as those who had never smoked.
He said: “We can now give couples hard evidence that making the effort to stop smoking in the periconceptional will be beneficial for their baby.
“Stopping smoking can ameliorate these detrimental effects.”
This could help change behaviour among smoking mothers, which he said had hardly changed in Britain over the last decade.
Prof Macklon explained that smoking during pregnancy “affects the transportation of nutrients, especially oxygen, across the placenta”.
It was also “reasonable to assume” that some of the 4,000 or so toxins in cigarettes were harmful to foetuses.
Note that in spite of the provocative headline, this article does not come right out and directly state that mothers smoke because they want to have smaller babies: “It is important that people who believe that a smaller baby means an easier birth take into account the increased risk of complicated deliveries in smokers." The message is in there somewhere, of course, but it's politically incorrect (or something - or violates civil rights) to spell it out.
If this is true, then the world is in more trouble than I thought. Next women will guzzle alcohol during pregnancy to deliberately cause fetal alcohol syndrome, because a dumb child is easier to handle than a smart one, won't be so expensive to educate, and won't sass you back.
This Camels ad is particularly insidious. It shows a woman wearing a veil, white gloves and a sort of Jackie Kennedy flared jacket, delicately implying pregnancy. On the opposite page is the usual garbage about "what cigarette do you smoke, Doctor?" The juxtaposition of the ladylike woman "in the family way" with a doctor earnestly pushing his cancer sticks jams these two elements together in people's minds: Doc loves to smoke, particularly Camels, meaning it must be OK; so for the pregnant woman, facing coyly in the other direction, it must also be OK, and for her baby too. Doctors were gods then, and it didn't matter what sort of bilge they promoted or defended.
My scanner is busted, or I'd post another photo of a pregnant woman from The Family of Man, a very tony and pretentious photographic exhibit from the 1950s. I am sure there was no irony or censure in the fact that she very obviously held a cigarette, right out in front of her swollen abdomen, in a way which people probably thought was darling. She had a sort of dreamy, oh-I'm-just-waiting-for-it posture, "but while I'm waiting, I'll just have a smoke". Most of these "candid" shots seem very posed to me, so let's hope she did not subject her baby to second-hand smoke, on top of whatever horrors crossed her placenta from puffing on Camels.
The above ad looks like it should be for Johnson and Johnson or Gerber or Pet Milk, but it's not. Disgusting of Big Tobacco to claim they take just as much pride in their lung-rotting lethal weapon as you do in your newborn infant. It's all the same to them. Birth. Death. Note also (in the text below) how in a hundred-word ad, the brand name appears FOUR times, as does the term "gentle/gentleness" - and what the holy HELL does that have to do with a cigarette?
Born gentle
Proud mothers, please forgive us if we too feel something of the pride of a new parent. For new Philip Morris, today's Philip Morris, is delighting smokers everywhere. Enjoy the gentle pleasure, the fresh unfiltered flavor, of this new cigarette, born gentle, then refined to special gentleness in the making. Ask for new Philip Morris in the smart new package. NEW Philip Morris. . . gentle for modern tastes
BLOGGER'S UPDATE. I got my scanner working, and though this is a bad representation of that photo from The Family of Man, you can see what I mean. The subject's expectant dreaminess is completely wrecked by that cigarette, though I doubt if it had much impact back then, except to make people think: "Lucky her. She'll have an easy labor, a "slim" (read: premature) baby, and her Winstons too. Win-win-win!"
If this is true, then the world is in more trouble than I thought. Next women will guzzle alcohol during pregnancy to deliberately cause fetal alcohol syndrome, because a dumb child is easier to handle than a smart one, won't be so expensive to educate, and won't sass you back.
This Camels ad is particularly insidious. It shows a woman wearing a veil, white gloves and a sort of Jackie Kennedy flared jacket, delicately implying pregnancy. On the opposite page is the usual garbage about "what cigarette do you smoke, Doctor?" The juxtaposition of the ladylike woman "in the family way" with a doctor earnestly pushing his cancer sticks jams these two elements together in people's minds: Doc loves to smoke, particularly Camels, meaning it must be OK; so for the pregnant woman, facing coyly in the other direction, it must also be OK, and for her baby too. Doctors were gods then, and it didn't matter what sort of bilge they promoted or defended.
My scanner is busted, or I'd post another photo of a pregnant woman from The Family of Man, a very tony and pretentious photographic exhibit from the 1950s. I am sure there was no irony or censure in the fact that she very obviously held a cigarette, right out in front of her swollen abdomen, in a way which people probably thought was darling. She had a sort of dreamy, oh-I'm-just-waiting-for-it posture, "but while I'm waiting, I'll just have a smoke". Most of these "candid" shots seem very posed to me, so let's hope she did not subject her baby to second-hand smoke, on top of whatever horrors crossed her placenta from puffing on Camels.
The above ad looks like it should be for Johnson and Johnson or Gerber or Pet Milk, but it's not. Disgusting of Big Tobacco to claim they take just as much pride in their lung-rotting lethal weapon as you do in your newborn infant. It's all the same to them. Birth. Death. Note also (in the text below) how in a hundred-word ad, the brand name appears FOUR times, as does the term "gentle/gentleness" - and what the holy HELL does that have to do with a cigarette?
Born gentle
Proud mothers, please forgive us if we too feel something of the pride of a new parent. For new Philip Morris, today's Philip Morris, is delighting smokers everywhere. Enjoy the gentle pleasure, the fresh unfiltered flavor, of this new cigarette, born gentle, then refined to special gentleness in the making. Ask for new Philip Morris in the smart new package. NEW Philip Morris. . . gentle for modern tastes
BLOGGER'S UPDATE. I got my scanner working, and though this is a bad representation of that photo from The Family of Man, you can see what I mean. The subject's expectant dreaminess is completely wrecked by that cigarette, though I doubt if it had much impact back then, except to make people think: "Lucky her. She'll have an easy labor, a "slim" (read: premature) baby, and her Winstons too. Win-win-win!"
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