Be very, very, VERY afraid

I didn't know whether to laugh or scream when I heard this, so I did them both at the same time. It reminded me of nothing more than Rusty in Orchestraville, which I uploaded on my YouTube channel quite a long time ago (see below). 

Peter the Piano is the only instrument that DOESN'T speak in this horrific method of child musical indoctrination. The others "speak" through the miracle of Sonovox, a method which pipes musical sounds directly into the larynx via a small speaker. The person is force-fed the sound, so to speak, then kind of verbally vomits it up. Thus the clarinet or flute or violin or whatever appears to "speak". It doesn't, of course - it sounds stringy and miserable, not to mention creepy. But back in the 1940s, it was the wonder of the ages.

There is a newer, much hipper version of this called a talk box, but I think it's the same deal, the sound of the instrument magically vomited up. Or projected, or broadcast, or whatever it is. The talking piano is much more scary, its "voice" freaky beyond belief. It has to be programmed in a sort of elaborate way. I don't know why anyone would ever want to do this. The piano is a piece of furniture designed to hold up flower vases and look decorative. Anything else is overkill.

Death to the squirrels!

I don't know why squirrels hate each other so much. Their furious vocalizing is like the worst kind of vile, nasty profanity, and it goes on and on by the hour. In this case, three of them seemed to be fighting over the same piece of turf - a clump of bushes in the corner of the back yard that "belongs" to a little red squirrel, who is even more nasty and aggressive. Is this place a particularly good source of food, shelter - what? Or just desirable because all the other squirrels want it?

In this case, a squirrel finally left the scene, followed by another, but they quickly chased each other back into the bush and started it up again. Strangely enough, a bunch of robins had a big squabble in the same bush for no reason I could determine. 

At about the 2:30 mark, Bentley comes around to lighten the mood a little, though the squirrels never stop swearing. They swear themselves hoarse, and it seems to go on all afternoon. At the 4:00-ish mark, you can see a squirrel sitting paralyzed on the fence post, no doubt suffering from squirrel PTSD.

The thumbnail isn't a real picture, so you can relax. I photoshopped it out of two other pictures. I've never seen squirrels actually fight, though some have big scars and chunks of fur missing from their tatty coats. A few have almost no hair at all on their tails, giving them a ratlike appearance. But that may be more from narrowly escaping coyotes, cougars and other predators than from fighting each other.

Do you feel bad yet? Ads specifically designed to humiliate women

Mommy was Always SO Cross

- Polly, pull up your sock!   And stop bothering Aunt Sara, or I'll spank you!

- Polly wasn't bothering me, Janet

- I'm sorry, Sara. . . I'm just so uncomfortable all the time, it makes me cross

- Janet, I'm no doctor but this bathroom paper of yours seems to me a good reason for all your        discomfort. It's dreadful! Look. . . I'll hold it up to the light here. What do you see?

- Good gracious, Sara! It looks like splinters and dirty specks!

- Just compare it with this soft-weve Waldorf. I always carry some in my purse

- What a difference! So clean and smooth. More like soft cloth!

TWO WEEKS LATER

- Hello, Polly! How are you Janet?

- Thanks to you and that wonderful soft-weve Waldorf, I feel just fine.

- Aunt Sara, Mommy isn't cross any more.

Make the "Light Test" today - and get to know the greater comfort of "Soft-Weve" WALDORF 5 cents

"Darling, I love you, but your hair stinks. Goodbye forever"

"A bottle of Lysol saved my marriage. And Henry just loves the taste!"

When Joan's underwear began to talk

                                          Red and smeary, eh?

NOW we know why he avoids her embrace. He longs for the tangy taste of Lysol!

The sworn enemy of romance! A stumbling block in the path to success.

Pull yourself together, girl!

Fred left something on the doorknob.

SHE was a ONE-DATE Girl

Most of her engagements were "blind" dates. Later, these men found excuses when her name was brought up. Somehow, she never seemed to click.

They thought she was dull, when really she was constantly tired. She had a good figure, and a naturally lovely skin. But pimples marred its surface. Her eyes lacked the liveliness of a girl in good health. So night after night, she sat by the phone and waited for calls that never came. 

She might have been such a different girl if she had only known the importance of regular habits, and the harm that common constipation can do. This condition may cause headaches and loss of appetite. Wrinkles and pimples may appear. Energy is sapped. Personality becomes flat. 

Common constipation is generally caused by lack of "bulk" in meals. Scientific tests show that Kellogg's ALL-BRAN is a fine source of gently acting "bulk". ALL-BRAN also furnishes vitamin B and iron.

Serve as a cereal, or cook into muffins, breads, waffles, etc. Two tablespoons daily are usually sufficient. Isn't it better to enjoy this natural food than to take pills and drugs - so often harmful?

Kellogg's ALL-BRAN corrects only common constipation, makes no claim to be a "cure-all". But it has proved effective in so many thousands of cases that you should certainly give it a trial. Sold by all grocers. Made by Kellogg in Battle Creek, Mich.

"So I stuck it in my nose"

After a year with Henry, it's pretty old.

Hates her with makeup, hates her WITHOUT makeup.

Mary can't even get the jell-o "salad" right.

PEW PEW PEW

It took me a long time to figure out what that "pew-pew-pew!" noise was in the back yard. I heard it nearly every night, and it would get faster and faster until it turned into a sort of hysterical whistling and shrieking. I always assumed it was a particularly irritating sort of bird, but I could never see what it was.

I know what it is now. It's a squirrel.

This is a particularly aggressive red squirrel who loves to chase off any birds who try to get at "his" food source, the two bird feeders, plus any fallout on the ground. He also "owns" the very desirable real estate in the corner of the yard, a clump of bushes and trees which he often has to defend against those evil warlords of suburban wildlife, the Black Squirrels. 

This squirrel gets so worked up, I fear for its mental health at times. Maybe that's where the expression "squirrely" comes from.

"Who's that girl?" Mystery Mug Shot

Ghost cat

We saw the strangest thing in the back yard! It appeared only for a moment, then vanished into thin air.

Stop, stop! Stop this thing NOW!

Our Sea to Sky adventure got a bit hairy when at maximum altitude, the wind began to howl. At that point my husband helpfully said, "They stop it when the wind picks up." STOP IT?? How do you stop a gondola in mid-air? How do you get OUT Of the thing?

Ringo is the meaning of life

Bird in the bush

One of my more poetic nature videos. I shot this from very far away, through a window with a screen in it, but it lent the video a fey, almost mystical quality. Well, maybe. It's pretty wobbly, because I had a hard time keeping the bird in my sights and even had to edit out a big chunk where I lost it altogether (which is why I substituted music for my "fuuuuuck"s on the sound track).  I am not sure what bird it is - perhaps a robin, with that fat, rounded body, or a varied thrush. At one point it appeared to be asleep, with one foot drawn up.

Sometimes it strikes me with a shock of surprise that all this was out in the yard for the past thirty years, and I paid not the slightest bit of attention to it. Now, suddenly, a wonderland has opened up for me. What else am I looking at and not seeing?

Vintage Jell-o advertisements

"Edith Keeler must die!": Star Trek romance music

I found a lovely YouTube video of all the romantic music from the original Star Trek (as if there were any other Star Trek!) - but it was marred by the most HORRIBLE thumbnail I have ever seen. Totally inappropriate. It screams of clickbait, since people are more likely to click on a cheesy picture of Kirk and the Gorn than on Kirk kissing Edith Keeler.  These are such incredibly beautiful images, capturing the romantic essence of the series (which was, in case you didn't notice, very romantic indeed), making me wonder why on earth someone would ruin it with a stupid Gorn image with an even stupider caption.

I took some screen shots and made a slide show from the images in the video, then realized it was sort of redundant because the whole video IS a slide show. Mine is Spock-heavy, but that's not just because I favored Spock back then (and now!) - it's because Spock's romances were more intense, more significant, and much more tortured because they went against his Vulcan nature.

The music for the Jill Ireland episode (This Side of Paradise) was borrowed from Shore Leave, in which Ruth, Kirk's old flame from the academy, suddenly pops up out of nowhere, but she doesn't do very much except stand there in her prom dress. The Spock romance is wrenchingly poignant, the music heart-perfect - and Ireland, who died tragically young from breast cancer, stands in front of Spock with real tears streaming down her face: "And this is for MY good?" It is one of the most compelling moments in the entire series.

So please enjoy this, but don't pay any attention to the awful thumbnail because it is fake news. Or whatever. But the rest of the visuals are stunning, and the music more romantic than Tchaikovsky.

These are my personal favorites.

Reasons I love fall

How to make a simple task incredibly difficult

How do you teach a wild bird to eat from your hand? by A. Byrd X-pert

Around my parts, we practice a form of conditioning; acclimating the birds to our presence and our hand in a gradual process.

Place a feeder near a window of the house and keep it filled,

Over the course of a couple weeks, place the feeder closer and closer to the house.

Place the feeder right next to the window (one that can be opened)

Place bird feed on the windowsill,

After several days, stick the sleeve of a large shirt under the window sash and close the window on it.

Put bird feed on the sleeve where it is flat on the windowsill. Keep seed there for several days.

After several days, put a work glove on top of the sleeve cuff and put bird feed in the palm of the glove.

After several more days, you can open the window a bit, stick your arm into the sleeve and your hand into the glove. If you don’t move around much, if you hold bird feed in your gloved palm and keep it where the glove has been for several days, the bravest birds (tufted titmice and chickadees around here) will land on the glove and take the food.

When you are getting good responses, try feeding without the glove.

After a time, you could put a chair under the window, put on the familiar shirt, and extend your hand out with feed in it. It may take some time, but the brave birds will often come to your hand and take the food. Once you get to this point, you can sit in the chair with just about any clothing and the braver birds will make the effort to take the best food from your hand.

In NO case should you attempt to otherwise touch or pet the bird(s). Let them decide how close they are willing to get. Let them decide how long to stay. Let them control the interaction. They will never be pets, but they may become long-time friends….as long as you keep feeding them regularly.

I have no kick against this particular bird expert, but the first time I decided to try wild bird feeding (3 days ago), I walked up to my feeder, stood 3 or 4 feet away from it, held out my hand with some seeds on it, and within one minute a chickadee flew down and took a seed of my hand.

The next day I wasn't quite so lucky, as birds kept flying towards my hand, then veering away.  But today two chickadees decided not just to fly down, but to light for a couple of seconds while picking out a favorite seed.

The whole glove thing, I don't know, it's like a puppet show or something! I think a glove attached to a flat, empty sleeve would freak them out more than a normal human hand.

Back in my day, a thousand years ago, we used to call this method "federalizing the simple". I don't know where that expression came from, but it means taking something completely natural and simple and splitting it into a million difficult parts. 

I don't know how far I'll get with feeding wild birds by hand. I'd like those jays to come down, and so far they're skittish. It seems unlikely, but still more plausible than feeding them with a goddamn seed-dispensing hand puppet.

What I'm thinking of doing

Is it OK to pick up the violin again after more than ten years, because your doctor said you needed finger exercises for your arthritic left hand?

What would happen if opened that box?

When I put that thing away, it was the time my whole life changed.

My whole life. Everything. The box of my brain, and everything that was in it.

If I open that box again, after more than ten years, will my brain still be there?

Will my fingers still know how to play?

Nazi Squirrel II

Trying to find a post on this blog after five years and 3762 posts (!? - merciful GOD) is like straining birdseed through a sieve. Or something. But I finally found this animation, which I made quite a while ago, and which now seems just a tad simplistic.

In looking back, which you should never do, I found a shocking number of posts which referred to squirrels. I don't know why that is, because I don't even LIKE squirrels particularly, and find them nasty, aggressive, and ugly to listen to with all their suburban cursing and swearing. 

Maybe that's why they make naturally good Nazis, as expressed in this, my second Squirrel Sieg Heil animation.

This is just the poisoned icing on the cake.

Who's that cat? It's Bentley!

We noticed early on that Bentley had a certain quality in front of the camera. He doesn't pose, of course - no cat would. It's something else. I don't remember our last cat (Murphy) being like this, though he was gorgeous in his 22-pound prime. 

The camera captures Bentley's inner as well as outer beauty. There's something a little sad about his eyes, which are very luminous and sometimes a bit scary. It's his "moon eyes" look, nearly all pupil, in which his eyes glow, oval and most un-catlike. 

Bentley will be cool to me sometimes, turn ass and ignore me the way cats do, and then, when I'm curled in a dark room to try to have a nap to make up for a crappy night, I will feel "something", someone bumping up against me, almost violently, then turning around and around to find the best place to snuggle. 

It's Bentley.

HEY! Meet the Swinger

This near-perfect advertising gem from the mid-'60s stars a shockingly young and fresh-faced Ali Macgraw, who would soon rocket to fame in Love Story only to plummet into total oblivion. Being married to Steve McQueen will do that to you.

But before all that, there was this delectable ad for the Polaroid Swinger: "it's more than a camera, it's almost alive/It's only 19 dollars and 95!" A yet-to-be-famous utility singer named Barry Manilow sang the irresistibly catchy jingle. And such a product! It was new, it was affordable, it was"right now". Instead of a red light going on when you were ready to shoot, the camera flashed a large black-and-white YES. In fact, it used only black and white film, which didn't seem to matter to the young and hip.

I remember Polaroid cameras, the very early ones where you "zipped it off" (ripped off a plastic cover after allowing the thing to "stew" for so many minutes). I remember my Dad taking pictures of me on my horse, and him getting this - stuff - on his hands, this caustic goo from the margins of the picture, chemicals for developing it or something. After the picture dried - and it had to dry, just like those old-fashioned photos you developed in a tray, then hung up with clothespins - you had to stick on an adhesive-backed piece of cardboard to keep it from curling. But once that backing was on there, you'd never get it off.

I still have some photos - OK, a lot of them - with thick plastic backings on them, tiny things about 2 by 3 inches. For a few years, this was all we took. They had the instant payoff factor, but unfortunately over the years they have become almost indecipherable. I scanned a few of them and blew them up, but the results were mixed. Some of the best shots of my kids growing up were taken with this low-tech method, meaning that most of them were lost. 

But that aside, this is one of the most perfect ads I've ever seen, second only to that first Maxwell House work of genius with the bongo-drum percolator ("tastes as good as it smells"). The Swinger embodies the '60s, beach life, freedom from responsibility, being young and attractive and with your whole life ahead of you. You could smoke then, and stay out late, and eat and drink whatever you wanted to, and still look great with no effort. Ali Macgraw had that earth angel innocence, the no-makeup face, the wash 'n wear hair. 

I made a ton of gifs last night from this, my all-time-second-favorite ad, but they somehow turned out to be unsatisfying. It's hard to extract a few seconds out of such a seamlessly tight work of art. The shots cascade and tumble into each other, creating a dizzy sense of freedom. And - click - click - every move, every pose, every activity is captured on film, in crisp black and white that develops right before your eyes.

So what was I going to focus on? Hair. Ali's hair, which is used in a particular way in this one-minute saga of '60s youth. It's very very fast, so you have to watch for it. Her hair whips around, tosses, flings, and is casually pushed back. I did gifs of Ali's hair, plus a few of her walking in delightfully washed-out light, so that she becomes virtually animated.

Since I can't leave anything alone these days, I mucked around with the speed/direction/order of the frames and made them do things. I don't know if this improved them or not. I had mixed feelings about it, but thought, damn, I made all these things. Might as well put them up, as is. Wash 'n wear.