Friday, March 5, 2021

KINESCOPE THEATRE: TV in the 1940s


Some choice tidbits from Dumont Television Network. Dumont was the first major TV network in  the 1940s, when people thought of TV as either a passing fad, or just "radio with pictures". When Dumont went out of business a few years later and their quarters taken over by NBC, almost ALL the kinescopes of ALL the programs from their six- or seven-year reign of popularity were dumped into New York's East River. No kidding, they literally dumped all the records of Dumont's existence into the water to free up storage space. Someone actually dove after them and salvaged a few kinescopes, which is what you are seeing here. If they look a little dodgy, that's why.

Thursday, March 4, 2021

The one who tries to hide what he don't know to begin with

 

Positively 4th Street.

Bob Dylan

You've got a lotta nerve to say you are my friend
When I was down you just stood there grinnin'
You've got a lotta nerve to say you got a helping hand to lend
You just want to be on the side that's winnin'


You say I let you down, ya know its not like that
If you're so hurt, why then don't you show it?
You say you've lost your faith, but that's not where its at
You have no faith to lose, and ya know it.


I know the reason, that you talked behind my back
I used to be among the crowd you're in with
Do you take me for such a fool, to think I'd make contact
With the one who tries to hide what he don't know to begin with?


You see me on the street, you always act surprised
You say "how are you?", "good luck", but ya don't mean it
When you know as well as me, you'd rather see me paralyzed
Why don't you just come out once and scream it


No, I do not feel that good when I see the heartbreaks you embrace
If I was a master thief perhaps I'd rob them
And tho I know you're dissatisfied with your position and your place
Don't you understand, it's not my problem?


I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes
And just for that one moment I could be you
Yes, I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes
You'd know what a drag it is to see you

Blogger's note. OK then. This is often cited as the nastiest, cruellest, most heartless song ever written, with a lyric that would peel paint off the walls, not to mention 20 layers of wallpaper. But that's what it's supposed to do.


Think of it. If you've never in your life been in this position, then you are truly blessed. You see someone coming toward you, grinning, glad-handing, full of righteous hot air and foul gas, bustling up to slap you on the back and make you thoroughly nauseated with their complete insincerity. . . well, you get the picture. If you've ever had an old high school classmate (the one who used to humiliate you at every opportunity) come surging up to you to say, "Hey, remember me?" - if you've ever had someone try to "friend" you on Facebook who was never any friend of yours. . . 

This song is FAIR. It's about someone who stabbed Dylan in the back repeatedly, pretended to be his friend, sucked up to him, basked in his reflected glory - then betrayed him, attempted to destroy him, and came back smiling to ask for a favor.


The other "unforgiveable" Dylan lyric is Don't Think Twice, It's All Right - which MAY live up to the assumption of meanest song lyric of all time. But look more closely, and you'll see why he feels so bitter:

It ain’t no use in callin’ out my name, gal
Like you never did before
It ain’t no use in callin’ out my name, gal
I can’t hear you anymore
I’m a-thinkin’ and a-wond’rin’ walkin' down the road
I once loved a woman, a child I’m told
I give her my heart but she wanted my soul
But don’t think twice, it’s all right

Though this song is invariably described as being "about" his forlorn and hopeless love for the free-spirited artist Suze Rotolo, it is just as much about Joan Baez, the arrogant and opportunistic Baez who wanted to be the first to "discover" Dylan's genius, to present him to the world on a silver platter of her own making, and bask in his reflected glory - only to fall into bitter ranting when Dylan failed to return the favor and ask Baez to climb onto the stage with him. 

But soft, what could this sudden contradiction mean?  It's the fact that things were totally different by then. I mean totally. Bobby was no longer singing Woody Guthrie songs with a sailor cap on. He was kicking ass with rock masterpieces such as Like a Rolling Stone, while Baez was still warbling away about Mary Hamilton. Nothing had changed with her. Not only that - Baez was so established when they met that she already had her first gold record before Dylan ever recorded a thing. Helping her up onstage when he had already remade himself  several times over would clang so badly that it would not work for either one of them, and he knew it.

There is another song which more closely linked to Rotolo, and in this case there is very little ambiguity about it.  Ballad in Plain D, one that I felt an unusual attachment to back in the day, was starkly and literally autobiographical, a rarity for Dylan both then and now. That song actually happened. It went down just the way he wrote it. With Dylan's propensity for wearing layers of masks and evading analysis, it's a shocking and singular example of unmasking himself. People were hurt by this lyric, even devastated, and in public - but that is its power. Even now, so many decades later, Dylan's songs ignite a light bulb of recognition, a powerful sense that you have lived this, but never knew how to express it. It inspires that quick intake of breath, the near-baffled gasp which is one of the more spontaneous reactions to the emotional ambush that is genius. 


Tuesday, March 2, 2021

"Just take the f***ing picture!" Prince Philip gaffes and gems


1 After being told that Madonna was singing the Die Another Day theme in 2002: “Are we going to need ear plugs?” 

2 To a car park attendant who didn’t recognise him in 1997, he snapped: “You bloody silly fool!”

 

3 To Simon Kelner, republican editor of The Independent, at Windsor Castle reception: “What are you doing here?” “I was invited, sir.” Philip: “Well, you didn’t have to come.”

 

4 To female sea cadet last year: “Do you work in a strip club?”

 

5 To expats in Abu Dhabi last year: “Are you running away from something?”

 

6 After accepting a conservation award in Thailand in 1991: “Your country is one of the most notorious centres of trading in endangered species.”

 

7 At a project to protect turtle doves in Anguilla in 1965, he said: “Cats kill far more birds than men. Why don’t you have a slogan: ‘Kill a cat and save a bird?’”

 

8 To multi-ethnic Britain’s Got Talent 2009 winners Diversity: “Are you all one family?”

 

9 To President of Nigeria, who was in national dress, 2003: “You look like you’re ready for bed!”

 

10 His description of Beijing, during a visit there in 1986: “Ghastly.”

 

11 At Hertfordshire University, 2003: “During the Blitz, a lot of shops had their windows blown in and put up notices saying, ‘More open than usual’. I now declare this place more open than usual.”

 

12 To deaf children by steel band, 2000: “Deaf? If you’re near there, no wonder you are deaf.”

 

13 To a tourist in Budapest in 1993: “You can’t have been here long, you haven’t got a pot belly.”

 

14 To a British trekker in Papua New Guinea, 1998: “You managed not to get eaten then?”

 

15 His verdict on Stoke-on-Trent, during a visit in 1997: “Ghastly.”

 

16 To Atul Patel at reception for influential Indians, 2009: “There’s a lot of your family in tonight.”

 

17 Peering at a fuse box in a Scottish factory, he said: “It looks as though it was put in by an Indian.” He later backtracked: “I meant to say cowboys.”

 

18 To Lockerbie residents after plane bombing, 1993: “People say after a fire it’s water damage that’s the worst. We’re still drying out Windsor Castle.”

 

19 In Canada in 1976: “We don’t come here for our health.”

 

20 “I never see any home cooking – all I get is fancy stuff.” 1987

 

21 On the Duke of York’s house, 1986: “It looks like a tart’s bedroom.”

 

22 Using Hitler’s title to address German chancellor Helmut Kohl in 1997, he called him: “Reichskanzler.”

 

23 “We go into the red next year... I shall have to give up polo.” 1969.

 

24 At party in 2004: “Bugger the table plan, give me my dinner!”

 

25 To a woman solicitor, 1987: “I thought it was against the law for a woman to solicit.”

 

26 To a civil servant, 1970: “You’re just a silly little Whitehall twit: you don’t trust me and I don’t trust you.”

 

27 On the 1981 recession: “A few years ago, everybody was saying we must have more leisure, everyone’s working too much. Now everybody’s got more leisure time they’re complaining they’re unemployed. People don’t seem to make up their minds what they want.”

 

28 On the new £18million British Embassy in Berlin in 2000: “It’s a vast waste of space.”

 

29 After Dunblane massacre, 1996: “If a cricketer suddenly decided to go into a school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat, are you going to ban cricket bats?”

 

30 To the Aircraft Research Association in 2002: “If you travel as much as we do, you appreciate the improvements in aircraft design of less noise and more comfort – provided you don’t travel in something called economy class, which sounds ghastly.”

 

31 On stress counselling for servicemen in 1995: “We didn’t have counsellors rushing around every time somebody let off a gun. You just got on with it!”

 

32 On Tom Jones, 1969: “It’s difficult to see how it’s possible to become immensely valuable by singing what are the most hideous songs.”

 

33 To the Scottish WI in 1961: “British women can’t cook.”

 

34 To then Paraguay dictator General Stroessner: “It’s a pleasure to be in a country that isn’t ruled by its people.”

 

35 To Cayman Islanders: “Aren’t most of you descended from pirates?”

 

36 To Scottish driving instructor, 1995: “How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test?”

 

37 At a WF meeting in 1986: “If it has four legs and it’s not a chair, if it’s got two wings and it flies but is not an aeroplane and if it swims and it’s not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it.”

 

38 “You ARE a woman, aren’t you?” Kenya, 1984.

 

39 A VIP at a local airport asked HRH: “What was your flight, like, Your Royal Highness? Philip: “Have you ever flown in a plane?” VIP: “Oh yes, sir, many times.” “Well,” said Philip, “it was just like that.”

 

40 On Ethiopian art, 1965: “It looks like the kind of thing my daughter would bring back from school art lessons.”

 

41 To a fashion writer in 1993: “You’re not wearing mink knickers,are you?”

 

42 To Susan Edwards and her guide dog in 2002: “They have eating dogs for the anorexic now.”

 

43 When offered wine in Rome in 2000, he snapped: “I don’t care what kind it is, just get me a beer!” 

 

44 “I’d like to go to Russia very much – although the bastards murdered half my family.” 1967.

 

45 At City Hall in 2002: “If we could just stop the tourism, we could stop the congestion.”

 

46 On seeing a piezo-meter water gauge in Australia: “A pissometer?”

 

47“You have mosquitoes. I have the Press.” To matron of Caribbean hospital, 1966.

 

48 At a Bangladeshi youth club in 2002:“So who’s on drugs here?... HE looks as if he’s on drugs.”

 

49 To a children’s band in Australia in 2002: “You were playing your instruments? Or do you have tape recorders under your seats?”

 

50 At Duke of Edinburgh Awards scheme, 2006. “Young people are the same as they always were. Just as ignorant.”

 

51 On how difficult it is in Britain to get rich: “What about Tom Jones? He’s made a million and he’s a bloody awful singer.”

 

52 To Elton John on his gold Aston Martin in 2001: “Oh, it’s you that owns that ghastly car, is it?”

 

53 At an engineering school closed so he could officially open it, 2005: “It doesn’t look like much work goes on at this university.”

 

54 To Aboriginal leader William Brin, Queensland, 2002: “Do you still throw spears at each other?”

 

55 At a Scottish fish farm: “Oh! You’re the people ruining the rivers.”

 

56 After a breakfast of bacon, eggs, smoked salmon, kedgeree, croissants and pain au chocolat – from Gallic chef Regis Crépy, 2002: “The French don’t know how to cook breakfast.”

 

57 To schoolboy who invited the Queen to Romford, Essex, 2003: “Ah, you’re the one who wrote the letter. So you can write then?”

 

58 To black politician Lord Taylor of Warwick, 1999: “And what exotic part of the world do you come from?”

 

59 To parents at a previously struggling Sheffield school, 2003: “Were you here in the bad old days? That’s why you can’t read and write then!”

 

60 To Andrew Adams, 13, in 1998: “You could do with losing a little bit of weight.”

 

61 “Where’s the Southern Comfort?” When presented with a hamper of goods by US ambassador, 1999.

 

62 To editor of downmarket tabloid: “Where are you from?” “The Sun, sir.” Philip: “Oh, no . . . one can’t tell from the outside.”

 

63 Turning down food, 2000: “No, I’d probably end up spitting it out over everybody.”

 

64 Asking Cate Blanchett to fix his DVD player because she worked “in the film industry”, 2008: “There’s a cord sticking out of the back. Might you tell me where it goes?”

 

65 “People think there’s a rigid class system here, but dukes have even been known to marry chorus girls. Some have even married Americans.” 2000.

 

66 After hearing President Obama had had breakfast with leaders of the UK, China and Russia, 2010: “Can you tell the difference between them?”

 

67 On students from Brunei, 1998: “I don’t know how they’re going to integrate in places like Glasgow and Sheffield.”

 

68 On Princess Anne, 1970: “If it doesn’t fart or eat hay, she isn’t interested.”

 

69 To wheelchair-bound nursing-home resident, 2002: “Do people trip over you?”

 

70 Discussing tartan with then-Scottish Tory leader Annabel Goldie last year: “That’s a nice tie... Do you have any knickers in that material?”

 

71 To a group of industrialists in 1961: “I’ve never been noticeably reticent about talking on subjects about which I know nothing.”

 

72 On a crocodile he shot in Gambia in 1957: “It’s not a very big one, but at least it’s dead and it took an awful lot of killing!”

 

73 On being made Chancellor of Edinburgh University in 1953: “Only a Scotsman can really survive a Scottish education.”

 

74 “I must be the only person in Britain glad to see the back of that plane.” He hated the noise Concorde made flying over Buckingham Palace, 2002

 

75 To a fashion designer, 2009: “Well, you didn’t design your beard too well, did you?”

 

76 To the General Dental Council in 1960: “Dontopedalogy is the science of opening your mouth and putting your foot in it, which I’ve practised for many years.”

 

77 On stroking a koala in 1992: “Oh no, I might catch some ghastly disease.”

 

78 On marriage in 1997: “You can take it from me the Queen has the quality of tolerance in abundance.”

 

79 To schoolchildren in blood-red uniforms, 1998: “It makes you all look like Dracula’s daughters!”

 

80 “I don’t think a prostitute is more moral than a wife, but they are doing the same thing.” 1988.

 

81 To female Labour MPs in 2000: “So this is feminist corner then.”

 

82 On Nottingham Forest trophies in 1999: “I suppose I’d get in trouble if I were to melt them down.”

 

83 “It’s my custom to say something flattering to begin with so I shall be excused if I put my foot in it later on.” 1956.

 

84 To a penniless student in 1998: “Why don’t you go and live in a hostel to save cash?”

 

85 On robots colliding, Science Museum, 2000: “They’re not mating are they?”

 

86 While stuck in a Heriot Watt University lift in 1958: “This could only happen in a technical college.”

 

87 To newsreader Michael Buerk, when told he knew about the Duke of Edinburgh’s Gold Awards, 2004: “That’s more than you know about anything else then.”

 

88 To a British student in China, 1986: “If you stay here much longer, you’ll go home with slitty eyes.”

 

89 To journalist Caroline Wyatt, who asked if the Queen was enjoying a Paris trip, 2006: “Damn fool question!”

 

90 On smoke alarms to a woman who lost two sons in a fire, 1998: “They’re a damn nuisance - I’ve got one in my bathroom and every time I run my bath the steam sets it off.”


Monday, March 1, 2021

Bob Dylan - My Own Version of You



My Own Version of You
Written by: Bob Dylan

All through the summers and into January
I’ve been visiting morgues and monasteries
Looking for the necessary body parts
Limbs and livers and brains and hearts
I want to bring someone to life - is what I want to do
I want to create my own version of you


It must be the winter of my discontent
I wish you’d taken me with you wherever you went
They talk all night - they talk all day
Not for a second do I believe what they say
I want to bring someone to life - someone I’ve never seen
You know what I mean - you know exactly what I mean

I’ll take Scarface Pacino and the Godfather Brando
Mix ‘em up in a tank and get a robot commando
If I do it upright and put the head on straight
I’ll be saved by the creature that I create
I get blood from a cactus - make gunpowder from ice
I don’t gamble with cards and I don’t shoot no dice
Can you look in my face with your sightless eye
Can you cross your heart and hope to die
I’ll bring someone to life - someone for real
Someone who feels the way that I feel


I study Sanskrit and Arabic to improve my mind
I want to do things for the benefit of all mankind
I say to the willow tree - don’t weep for me
I’m saying the hell with all things that used to be
I get into trouble and I hit the wall
No place to turn - no place at all
I pick a number between one and two
And I ask myself what would Julius Caesar do


I’ll bring someone to life - in more ways than one
Don’t matter how long it takes - it’ll be done when it’s done
I’m gonna make you play the piano like Leon Russell
Like Liberace - like St. John the Apostle
Play every number that I can play
I’ll see you baby on Judgement Day
After midnight if you still want to meet
I’ll be at the Black Horse Tavern on Armageddon Street
Two doors down not that far to walk
I’ll hear your footsteps - you won’t have to knock


I’ll bring someone to life - balance the scales
I’m not gonna get involved in any insignificant details
You can bring it to St. Peter - you can bring it to Jerome
You can move it on over - bring it all the way home
Bring it to the corner where the children play
You can bring it to me on a silver tray


I’ll bring someone to life - spare no expense
Do it with decency and common sense
Can you tell me what it means to be or not to be
You won’t get away with fooling me
Can you help me walk that moonlight mile
Can you give me the blessings of your smile


I want to bring someone to life - use all my powers
Do it in the dark in the wee small hours
I can see the history of the whole human race
It’s all right there - its carved into your face
Should I break it all down - should I fall on my knees
Is there light at the end of the tunnel - can you tell me please
Stand over there by the Cypress tree
Where the Trojan women and children were sold into slavery
Long ago before the First Crusade
Way back before England or America were made
Step right into the burning hell


Where some of the best known enemies of mankind dwell
Mister Freud with his dreams and Mister Marx with his axe
See the raw hide lash rip the skin off their backs
You got the right spirit - you can feel it you can hear it
You got what they call the immortal spirit
You can feel it all night you can feel it in the morn
Creeps into your body the day you are born
One strike of lightning is all that I need
And a blast of ‘lectricity that runs at top speed
Show me your ribs - I’ll stick in the knife
I’m gonna jump start my creation to life
I want to bring someone to life - turn back the years
Do it with laughter - do it with tears

Copyright

© 2020 by Special Rider Music

Sunday, February 28, 2021

George Gershwin's sister dances the Charleston



A rare home movie of Frances Gershwin dancing the Charleston. She looked almost uncannily like her brother, which must have been a mixed blessing. 

Friday, February 26, 2021

Me vs. technology: who won this round?



For what it's worth, this is a letter I wrote in response to a nasty experience I just had at the optometrist's. It's very hard for me to be assertive and normally I would just quietly fume and make myself sick. But I want to post this in case anyone else in the world has ever felt this sort of unnecessary intimidation. BTW, this wasn't even my main eye test, which was done on a series of perhaps nine different machines, but a "follow-up" which was then going to be followed by another "follow-up". BTW, I was warned to take all identifying marks off this in case they "took legal action".

Dear Dr. Somebody,

I feel I would be remiss if I did not report a very negative and stressful experience I had at my last appointment with your office. I was treated rudely and disrespectfully, and the instructions I was given could not have been more vague and confusing. I was surprised that the receptionist conducts so much of the eye testing, but I was willing to let that go as I was under a lot of pressure and needed to get it over with. Another problem was that she has an accent which was making clear communication with her very difficult. This is not a criticism but a fact. Along with my partial hearing loss, it meant I had to ask her several times what she had just said.

When I sat at the third machine (I can’t name what it was because I am not cognizant of the technology), she told me I would see “flashing lights” and that I would have to “push the big button” when the lights came on. I was not at all clear what this meant, as she just handed me a sort of wand without showing me what to do with it. When I asked her for a clearer explanation, as by now I was quite confused, she said, quite irritably, “But I already explained all this to you.”


I sat through the first part of the test staring into the machine (I wasn't allowed to blink) and waiting for the “flashing lights”, which I assumed would be identical to all the other tests I had already had, with a very bright light like a flashbulb. This did not happen. I only saw tiny pinpoints of light appearing and disappearing at light speed all over the outside of my field of vision, but I did not respond because I was waiting for the “flashing lights”. So I sat there doing nothing and feeling confused and very foolish. After a while I had to assume she meant these tiny pinpricks of light and tried to keep up with them, which I could not.

When she came in to switch eyes, I once again asked her to clarify the instructions. Once more she said, sounding exasperated, “But I explained all this to you already.” I have severe arthritis in my hands at the base of the thumb and could barely keep up, as it was quite painful, and my hand was sticking to the “big button” due to the hand sanitizer. I felt as if I was holding a joy stick and trying to play a very fast-moving video game which I did not understand. My eye-hand coordination has always been extremely poor, the lights were tiny, very hard to see and moving at incredible speed, and I was sure I was failing the test. I was not comfortable asking her anything else as she had already been so abrupt with me.


Perhaps this has never happened to anyone else you have dealt with before (I was certainly given that impression), but I do find it hard to believe, as you must treat a great many elderly patients. My last eye test basically involved reading lines of type and looking into a couple of machines, but I have not experienced anything remotely like this intimidating high-tech “state-of-the-art” setup. But all these marvelous machines accomplish exactly nothing if you go home feeling worse than when you came in. Customer relations should always come first, and your job should be to serve the public with patience, courtesy and respect. This is absolutely crucial when most people are already so overstressed that only one bad experience might put them over the top.

I have my glasses now, am happy with my vision, was already told my eye health was good for my age, and don’t need any more rude and disrespectful treatment that leaves me feeling foolish and only adds to my already sky-high levels of stress. Please cancel all my further appointments, and do not contact me again.

Margaret Gunning


(Blogservations. The machines have taken over. I was tested on no fewer than NINE high-tech pieces of equipment just because I needed new glasses. At first I was in awe of it all and felt like I was on the Starship Enterprise, though I did not know why the receptionist ran the first three tests on me in a "little room" off to the side. Did she have any actual training to do this sort of thing? The rest of the appointment was a blur of e-charts, flourescent eyeball diagrams, blood vessel maps, and complicated explanations by the optometrist of all the diseases of the eye which I might have, but don't, and which finally concluded that there was nothing wrong with my eyes at all, and that in fact my eyes were ten years younger than my (admittedly run-down) biological self. 

But it was in the follow-up, which I now call the "foul-up", that I became enmeshed in a collision course between complex machinery and total incoherence. "Push the big button"? 
WHAT button, where? And why that sour frown on her face even as I struggled to figure out just what the fxxx she could mean?


I won't go back, but I confess here and now that I haven't sent the letter yet and probably won't. I usually "think better of it" the next day - and when I think of the letters I USED to actually send, to doctors, psychiatrists, etc. to protest such minor things as institutionalized abuse, and how those letters became part of my "file/diagnosis" - well, let's just say it never paid off in the end. It was all seen as pathology, as EVERYTHING a psychiatric patient says or does is pathology. They're mentally ill, remember?

Oh, and one more thing. I didn't think anything could be worse than the time the optician took one look at my prescription and exclaimed "WOAHHHHWW" - meaning: God, are you ever blind! But what happened today "trumped" even that wretched experience.)

UPDATE. I sent the letter and sighed with relief to be DONE with it all, hoping they would at least honor my request for NO followup. This morning I received not one, but TWO phone calls from this person, though I specifically asked them NEVER to contact me again. I hung up after the first call, then the phone immediately rang again and it was that person, the one whose dismissive rudeness basically ruined my day.

 All of a sudden, I seem to be the one who is in trouble. The receptionist said she would only call back if there was a "problem", but the "problem" is that the instructions I received were so fucked up that I could not complete the totally unnecessary test. My daughter has a severe eye problem, has had two surgeries, and I believe has been botched by an incompetent surgeon. Now she needs a cornea transplant due to HIS incompetence. This may leave her BLIND, unable to work ever again, and forced to go through the legal system.  I don't usually use this language, but I am beyond upset - I am terrified for her - so FUCK THEM ALL!


MY LOCKDOWN HAIR: truth or dare



Something I made a couple of days ago. I'm finding out what you can do without: A LOT, and what you can't - much more - and more heartbreaking, as it involves the loss of beloved people who are gone from my life. 

Monday, February 22, 2021

FATA MORGANA: can we believe our eyes?

 


A Fata Morgana (Italian: [ˈfaːta morˈɡaːna]) is an unusual and complex form of superior mirage that is seen in a narrow band right above the horizon. It is the Italian name for the Arthurian sorceress Morgan le Fay, from a belief that these mirages, often seen in the Strait of Messina, were fairy castles in the air or false land created by her witchcraft to lure sailors to their deaths. 




Although the term Fata Morgana is sometimes applied to other, more common kinds of mirages, the true Fata Morgana is different from both an ordinary superior mirage and an inferior mirage.




Fata Morgana mirages significantly distort the object or objects on which they are based, often such that the object is completely unrecognizable.




A Fata Morgana can be seen on land or at sea, in polar regions or in deserts. It can involve almost any kind of distant object, including boats, islands and the coastline.





A Fata Morgana is often rapidly changing. The mirage comprises several inverted (upside down) and erect (right side up) images that are stacked on top of one another. Fata Morgana mirages also show alternating compressed and stretched zones.





BLOGSERVATIONS. I knew something about mirages, but I thought they were those things in the desert, where you see water and palm trees on the horizon and by the time you run to them, they're gone. But the Fata Morgana, named after the sorceress Morgan Le Fay in the Arthurian legend, is something quite else.

I seem to remember, in certain films, seeing something above the water, something weirdly shimmering that kept changing size and shape. It seemed to melt, stretch and reform like a strange liquid. Sometimes you could see through it. These things likely freaked out those sailors of antiquity, just as they freak out people today. Pirate ship? Imminent attack? One can see where they might be mistaken for a UFO.




A boat can suddenly project itself upward so that it appears to hang in the sky, morphing from an elongated shape to a blob to - nothing. The marine mirages make sense - sort of - because of all that reflection on the water. But what about the ones on land?

Wikipedia tells me (and how can Wikipedia be wrong?) that a Fata Morgana can be almost anything: an island, a mountainside, a mountain GOAT if you could get a goat to hang upside-down. But how about whole cities? The photos from China appear to show tall buildings supended above the clouds, leading a lot of people to cry "photoshop!" Then how to explain the video of the same phenomenon? Who could have created that?





All this comes from the Land of the Strange, that country in which I am a cliffdweller or sharecropper or part-time lover. It's all very well to say "it's just a trick of light". Simple physics. Physics is a strange thing, however, and some time I'll post something about the overtone chanting of Tibetan monks, which is, quite literally, a chord coming from one person's throat. The way the sound leaps all over the musical spectrum is downright spooky, and seems impossible.

Do we believe our eyes, and if we don't, what do we rely on? Physics? Upside-down boats (or goats), or castles in the air? And did anyone in that eerie floating city in China happen to look down?