CAPYBARA CONFIDENTIAL!

When I found out there is an entire YouTube channel devoted to capybaras, my life was complete. Fifteen years ago Caitlin was obsessed with capybaras, and do you think we could find anything about them? Hardly anything. Certainly not videos like these. This means I can vary my viewing pleasure and watch something besides cute kittens and baby goats. 

💚I LOVE TURTLES!💚

One of my all-time-favorite nature videos. Not exactly action-packed,  but very turtle-licious.

PANDEMIC HAIR: stages of grief

IN THE BEGINNING. Unable to see stylist. Taking matters into my own hands, began to trim the ends off with a razor comb. Colored it with something called hair mascara. Did photo shoot with cat for Facebook page.

 

Quite a few months in. (Already lost track of time.) Not happy about my attempts to keep it short. Natural colour showing through (grey or blonde or what??). Keep thinking about making an appointment, and not making an appointment.

 

PANDEMIC PONYTAIL. More than a year in. No more razor combs, no more hair mascara. This is what it looks like. First, I haven’t worn a ponytail since I was eight. I haven’t seen my natural colour (whatever you call this - I will call it blonde, but in natural light it looks grey) in over 30 years. It is a totally different texture, the annoyingly tickly cornsilk of my childhood. I wore the same side part and barrette when I was five years old. I think my stylist would scream if she saw what has become of me, but if the entire world changes, so does your identity.

Acceptance?? I look ten years older than I did a year ago, but then, a lot has happened, and NOT happened, and my hair is the least of it.

I am back to my five-year-old hair. But at least I look happier now.

SMOKESCREEN: a treat instead of a treatment

One of the reasons I spend so much time on YouTube (OK, the COVID apocalypse is right now the main reason) is to scan the comments, particularly regarding a video which has been up for several years. Sometimes I even see one of my own comments from, say, eight years ago, and it gives me a funny time-machine feeling. The following was a comment on a three-hour documentary (the kind A & E used to produce before their content slid into the sewer) recounting the history of Big Tobacco and their successful coverup of the lethal nature of nicotene addiction. 

This had to be one of the strangest comments I've ever seen on ANY topic, and I want to pick it apart here because it rang a lot of bells for me - not as a smoker, which I've never been, but as a sober alcoholic who nearly drowned in her addiction to alcohol. In other words, I know the dynamics of addiction pretty well, I've lived it through my own heart and liver and brain, and I see all the earmarks of an addict in these strangely defensive, yet rhapsodic remarks about the now socially-taboo habit of smoking.

"I've been a smoker for about a year and a half, smoking about three cigarettes a week with additive free rolling tobacco and its probably one of the most enjoyable habits I've ever taken up in my life.  Here are 5 Thoughts on Why I Smoke Cigarettes:

 1. If you are not willing to even give me the time of day because I have a pinch of dried leaves rolled into a tiny cylinder of paper and lit on fire between my fingers, and that's your only reason to not talk to me, then thank you for removing yourself from the equation and not wasting my time.

 2. There is something zen and meditative about sitting down with a bag of tobacco and rolling your own cigarettes. The mechanical muscle memory of making something relieves you of having to focus on other things.

 3. Almost everything seems better with a cigarette. Long drives in the car. Pulling an all-nighter. Coffee. Sex. Taking a poop. The only thing I can think of that it makes worse is a stuffy nose and a sore throat from a cold, and god dammit if I just don't soldier through that.

 4. There's something beautiful about the way that smoke curls through the air, interacts with sunlight, and vanishes like it never existed. It really makes me want to capture it in a photograph or draw it on a pad of paper.

 5. As far as addictions go, smoking cigarettes is probably the least harmful one that I have. Friendships will come and go. Relationships will start and end. People are born and then we die. But I can always go to a gas station and buy a new pack of cigarettes."

OK, so let me analyze these baffling comments one at a time.

I've been a smoker for about a year and a half, smoking about three cigarettes a week with additive free rolling tobacco and its probably one of the most enjoyable habits I've ever taken up in my life.  Here are 5 Thoughts on Why I Smoke Cigarettes:

This guy hits the ground running in what I would call the art of minimizing/rationalizing. "About three cigarettes a week" is kind of like saying you pee three times a week. As far as I know from talking to hundreds of smokers in AA, it just doesn't happen. Even if he's correct in telling us how moderate his habit is, his description of "additive free rolling tobacco" somehow makes it all sound a lot more wholesome, organic, and just plain safer than smoking those awful tubes with the filters in them. "Taken up" gives a sense of starting a new hobby, or a new religion perhaps, and certainly embracing the habit of his own free will.

 1. If you are not willing to even give me the time of day because I have a pinch of dried leaves rolled into a tiny cylinder of paper and lit on fire between my fingers, and that's your only reason to not talk to me, then thank you for removing yourself from the equation and not wasting my time.

WHOA!  Settle down, fella! Nobody's out to get you here, so why the sudden cobra-strike before anyone has even said anything? I saw no direct criticisms of anything he had said in the comments. But that wasn't the issue. He was defensive, surly, even hostile before the conversation even started. It was: hello, I love smoking, and go to hell, you're wasting my time. Anyone who disagrees with him is dismissed with contempt before they even get to make their point. If these are five "thoughts", I'd like to see what he calls "insults". The description of an innocuous "pinch of dried leaves" is probably the most extreme example of minimizing I've ever seen. Hell, I used to drink a clear liquid that might have looked like an ordinary glass of water, except that it said Smirnoff on the label. 

 2. There is something zen and meditative about sitting down with a bag of tobacco and rolling your own cigarettes. The mechanical muscle memory of making something relieves you of having to focus on other things.

This is one of the most far-fetched (if poetic) defenses of smoking I've ever seen. I doubt very much that someone HAS to resort to rolling their own cigarettes to attain a meditative state. If it's muscle memory and the comfort of repetitive actions that provides so much comfort, peeling carrots might do the same thing. If you have the desire to "make something", take up carpentry or cooking or painting or sculpture. It's a lot more constructive way to use your hands, and you won't end up with rotting lungs or a stopped heart. I also wonder exactly what those "other things" are - never spelled out as either positive or negative, but definitely things he would rather not focus on.

 3. Almost everything seems better with a cigarette. Long drives in the car. Pulling an all-nighter. Coffee. Sex. Taking a poop. The only thing I can think of that it makes worse is a stuffy nose and a sore throat from a cold, and god dammit if I just don't soldier through that.

Let me get this straight. You smoke "about three cigarettes A WEEK". So you tell me. Then suddenly everything you do seems to require a cigarette: driving, staying up late, drinking coffee, having sex, even taking a shit! This sounds like the classic smoker's pattern: get up in the morning, have a cigarette. Drink some coffee, have a cigarette. Drive to work, have a. . . or walk the dog, or pee, or whatever-the-hell-it-is you happen to be doing. Smoking doesn't "make it better" either. It's just a reflex based on addictive craving. ANY excuse will do. One of the reasons it's so hard to quit is that you associate every single activity of your day with lighting up. If you truly smoke only three cigarettes a week, you must take very few long drives in the car (and a long drive - hey, wouldn't that maybe require MORE THAN ONE cigarette?). The George S. Patton-type stoicism about sore throats and colds is just a way to flaunt his immunity to such mortal weakness.

 4. There's something beautiful about the way that smoke curls through the air, interacts with sunlight, and vanishes like it never existed. It really makes me want to capture it in a photograph or draw it on a pad of paper.

You could light your fireplace, if you have one, or make a bonfire in your back yard. You could even burn incense (that would be even better, and would smell good rather than toxic and foul). There are ways you can watch smoke curling through the air, having a little dance with the sun rays, etc., without lighting one of your roll-your-owns made with tobacco out of your little drawstring bag. It just isn't poetic to lose a lung or die gasping for air in the COPD ward. It's even worse for your family to have to watch, knowing how preventable it was. You don't get much artwork done if you're dead.

 5. As far as addictions go, smoking cigarettes is probably the least harmful one that I have. Friendships will come and go. Relationships will start and end. People are born and then we die. But I can always go to a gas station and buy a new pack of cigarettes.

Here is an admission in plain type that this guy DOES have an addiction to smoking. He calls it "the least harmful one that I have", making me wonder just how many addictions he DOES have. In a sense, all addictions are the same - it's what goes on in the brain that is such a disaster, the dopamine rush and surge of artificial wellbeing - and the substance, such as "that a pinch of dried leaves rolled into a tiny cylinder of paper and lit on fire between my fingers", is just the delivery device. 

But it's what he says after that which truly horrifies me. Friendships will come and go, relationships will start and end. . . This echoes very closely the MANY statements made in the original documentary by long-term smokers (many of them in the terminal stages) who actually cherished their habit, saw cigarettes as their "friend", and even saw mere human relationships as comparatively disposable.  The tone of his "you live, you die" comments is harsh and feels dismissive of life itself, but then comes the topper: "But I can always go to a gas station and buy a new pack of cigarettes."

Go to a gas station? Buy a new pack. . . But wait. Whatever happened to your little drawstring bag, the wholesome loose tobacco with no harmful additives, the three hand-rolled cigarettes a week? There's nothing very meditative about stopping at a Shell station and furtively purchasing a pack of Marlboros along with your Snickers bar and a bag of Cheetos. It's sad, because it's pretty plain to me that he is basically lying, and posting the elaborate comment publicly out of some need to defend something that he knows is clearly harmful to him. This guy is very likely a full-on smoker, someone who takes denial to the level of an art form, with one of the most elaborate smokescreens I have ever encountered. He deserves the Old Gold "Treat Instead of a Treatment" Addiction Denial Award of the Week. 

Creepy 1961 Computer Sings DAISY (HAL'S song from 2001)!

I don't have a lot to add to this, except to say it's getting thousands of views on my YouTube channel - and I finally figured out why. There's a TikTok craze going around now with various people, machines, computers, celebrities, etc. etc. singing this version of DAISY. I had no idea this was going on and just stumbled on the recording, then found the bizarre gizmo that supposedly recreates human speech. I put the two together just because they seemed to belong. 

UPDATE: No, THIS is the weirdest thing I’ve seen for sale on eBay.

Vintage Anatomically Correct Boy Doll Toy

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Sheer goatness/cuteness!

Unbelievably cute little goat! Like a bleating little stuffy on legs.

CANADA GOOSE: How close can you get?

THIS close.

OK, Piers, now tell us how you REALLY feel.

 

PIERS MORGAN: How the hell can Meghan 'I hate royalty but call me Duchess' Markle preach about father-child relationships when she's disowned her own Dad, and wrecked her husband's relationship with his?

By Piers Morgan for MailOnline

Published: 15:53 EDT, 4 May 2021 | Updated: 04:24 EDT, 5 May 2021

What would make the current shortlist for the title of World's Most Ludicrously Inappropriate Book?

Donald Trump's Guide to Diplomacy?

The Art of Protecting One's Privacy by the Kardashian Sisters?

Why Marriage is for Keeps by Bill and Melinda Gates?

These would all be good contenders were it not for the announcement this afternoon that Meghan Markle has written a book called 'The Bench' about the very special bond between father and child.

Sorry, WHAT?

Notwithstanding Ms Markle's seemingly unlimited thirst for committing attention-seeking acts of gargantuan hypocrisy, this seemed beyond parody.

But it was real.

I laughed out loud when the news broke via her ecstatic publishers, and even louder when I read the accompanying gush-laden statements.

Ms Markle proudly informed us that her debut literary tome captures 'the warmth, joy and comfort of the relationship between fathers and sons from all walks of life.'

She added: 'This representation was particularly important to me ... and I worked closely to depict this special bond through an inclusive lens. My hope is that The Bench resonates with every family, no matter the make-up, as much as it does with mine.'

Hmmmm.

Meghan Markle has written a book called 'The Bench' about the very special bond between father and child. Sorry, WHAT? I laughed out loud when the news broke via her ecstatic publishers, and even louder when I read the accompanying gush-laden statements

Ms Markle proudly informed us that her debut literary tome captures 'the warmth, joy and comfort of the relationship between fathers and sons from all walks of life'

She added: 'This representation was particularly important to me ... and I worked closely to depict this special bond through an inclusive lens. My hope is that The Bench resonates with every family, no matter the make-up, as much as it does with mine'

I wonder how much these touching sentiments will resonate with her own family, or her husband's?

Lest we forget, Ms Markle has ruthlessly disowned her father Thomas and refuses to have anything to do with him despite the fact they now live just 70 miles from each other.

She is also reported to have disowned every other Markle, none of whom were invited to her wedding.

This doesn't seem like someone overly keen to operate 'an inclusive lens' to me.

In fact, it seems a singularly EX-clusive lens.

She also spray-gunned Thomas in her lie-packed Oprah whine-a-thon in a manner that was more 'ice, rage and irritation' than 'warmth, joy and comfort'.

As for Harry, he trashed his father Prince Charles in the same interview, moaning about how Daddy had stopped taking his calls or giving him cash, sounding like some needy spoiled brat teenager rather than a 36-year-old multi-millionaire doormat who ditched his family, country and duty because his chillingly controlling and ambitious wife wanted him to.

And unforgivably, he did this as Charles was desperately worried about HIS father, Prince Philip, who was lying seriously ill in hospital and later died.

How does any of this sit with Meghan's misty-eyed tribute to 'the warmth, joy and comfort of the relationship between fathers and sons'?

Very, very uneasily, I would suggest.

The pair of them also branded Harry's royal family a bunch of heartless racists, though no evidence has yet emerged to support any of their outrageously hurtful and damaging claims.

And they repeatedly attacked the institution of the Monarchy and everything it stands for.

Yet when it comes to flogging her book, what author name does Meghan Markle use?

Ah, of course: 'Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex.'

Yes, she continues to cynically exploit her royal titles because she knows that's the only reason anyone is paying her vast sums of money to spew her uniquely unctuous brand of pious hectoring gibberish in Netflix documentaries, Spotify podcasts or children's books.

Of course, her equally cynical publishers don't give a damn about any of this shocking double standard.

'Meghan's touching text explores the relationship between fathers and sons and undeniably tugs at the heartstrings that parents and caregivers feel,' said Mallory Loehr, publisher of the Random House Books for Young Readers Group.

She cooed that the illustrator's art 'beautifully matches the tender emotion of Meghan's words, and every spread is infused with a vibrant sense of joy and love. The Bench is timeless—it feels destined to become one of those books that people will be reading for generations to come.'

And unforgivably, Harry gave the Oprah interview as Charles was desperately worried about HIS father, Prince Philip, who was lying seriously ill in hospital and later die

The pair of them also branded Harry's royal family a bunch of heartless racists, though no evidence has yet emerged to support any of their outrageously hurtful and damaging claims. And they repeatedly attacked the institution of the Monarchy and everything it stands for. Pictured: Prince Charles leads the procession of male royals, including Harry, at his father's funeral

Hmmm, I don't wish to rain on the comically sycophantic parade - but I suspect this book will become an instant historical classic for all the wrong reasons.

The whole notion of Meghan Markle dishing out advice to anyone about the relationship between fathers and children is absolutely ridiculous given the appalling relationships she and her husband have with their own fathers.

Yet her brazen decision to do it anyway is so sadly typical of a woman whose tendency for staggering hypocrisy is only matched by her extraordinary tone-deafness.

I'd honestly rather hear parenting tips from Britney Spears's god-awful father because at least they still talk to each other.

In the press release, Ms Markle is described as 'a mother, wife, feminist, and activist' who 'currently resides in her home state of California with her family, two dogs, and a growing flock of rescue chickens.'

What it didn't clarify is that she resides with a lot more animals than family members.

In fact, the only three members of her entire family she seems to have any relationship with at all now are Harry, Archie and her mother.

The rest have been discarded along with her ex-husband, and almost every old friend and colleague.

'What Meghan wants, Meghan gets,' was Harry's famous refrain in the build-up to their wedding.

And so far, she's got exactly what she wanted: the handsome British Prince, the Californian mansion, the millionaire celebrity lifestyle she always craved, and since Oprah's unquestioning softball PR stunt, the coveted and ferociously-contested status of America's No1 oppressed victim – a poor innocent waif cruelly mistreated by the beastly racist British royals until she managed to grab her confiscated passport and escape back home.

The fact none of this ugly incendiary narrative is true is irrelevant to the people who matter to her – the Hollywood woke brigade for whom a personal version of the truth is far more important than the actual truth.

But what Ms Markle really needs now is some old-fashioned home truth.

THE truth, that is, not HER truth that usually turns out to be of the Princess Pinocchio veracity.

And THE truth is that she's a cynical disingenuous manipulator intent on wrecking the Royal Family's image around the world with her shameless, shameful, money-grabbing victim-playing antics, and dragging her hapless husband along for the ride.

This new book about father-children relationships is just another example of Meghan Markle's never-ending penchant for preaching what she never practices.

If she really cared about father-child relationships, she'd take a chauffeur-driven limousine on the hour-long trip to see her own father who's never even met either Harry or Archie.

And if she really cared about father-child relationships, she would never have trashed Harry's family on global TV in the horrible way that she did, causing yet more damage, possibly irreparably, to Harry's relationship with his father.

But then as we've seen from her gruesomely self-interested behavior during a pandemic that's caused so much devastation and pain to billions around the world, Meghan Markle doesn't really care about anyone but herself. 

Domenic Troiano - The Wear & The Tear On My Mind

I swear to God, a couple of years ago this phrase kept repeating in my mind: "But it's the wear and the tear on my mind. It's the wear and the tear on my mind. . . " I thought, OK, I'll google it and the song will come up. NOTHING. I mean nothing. I tried searching YouTube. Nothing there either. I tried every permutation of the line, wear, tear, mind, blind. . . not a thing. It was as if I'd imagined the whole thing. Then - just now, just a minute ago, as Bob Dylan says in his song - voila - it pops out at me, and it has been there on YouTube for a couple of years now. It's by a Canadian named Domenic Troiano, and it's one of those names buried at the back of my brain since about age 16, which is, let me tell you, a very long time. But here it is, and yes, it's exactly the way I remember it! But it's the wear and the tear on my mind. The wear and the tear on my mind. Oh yes!

I went out to see the gypsy 

To get my fortune told 

She said, I don't see much in the future for you 

You won't be gettin' old 

That got me worried 

So I went to see my doctor 

He said, son, you're gonna die 

Ain't nothin' I can do, ain't nothin' I can say 

All that's left for you to do is cry 

Lord, it's the wear and the tear on my mind 

It's the wear and the tear on my mind, on my mind 

Why is this world so unkind? 

So I went out to see a lawyer 

I asked him to write my will 

He looked at me with a real straight face 

And said, to whom do I send the bill? 

I couldn't believe that, so I called up my old lady 

And said, mama don't you start to cry 

It seems I've been here too long now 

And it's time for me to say goodbye 

Lord it's the wear and the tear on my mind 

It's the wear and the tear on my mind, on my mind 

Why is this world so unkind? 

It's the wear and the tear on my mind (on my mind) 

It's the wear and the tear on my mind (on my mind) 

Why is this world so unkind? 

Why is this world so unkind? 

Wear and the tear on my mind (on my mind) 

Wear and the tear on my mind (help me out Lord) 

Wear and the tear on my mind 

Wear and the tear on my mi-mi-mi-mind 

Wear and the tear on my mind (on my mind Lord) 

Wear and the tear on my mind

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE. Domenic Troiano died of prostate cancer at the age of 59.

Hey, that's my girl! Shannon Paterson covers the vaccine beat

My illustrious daughter Shannon covers the vaccine beat for CTV News Vancouver. We never get over the thrill of seeing her on TV! 

William Shatner On Life At 90

William Shatner at 90. Need I say more? 

💗Sexy Betty Boop: SHAKE THAT THING!💗

Confession time: I have a "thing" for Betty Boop. It's bizarre enough to love a cartoon character "in that way", but last time I checked I was hetero, so. . . but never mind. Some corner of me that refuses to conform crushes on Betty, or at least the magnificent pre-Code Betty who could really shake that thing.

She wore practically nothing, and even what she did wear kept falling off or being pulled off her, or blown off by the wind, or suggestively tugged on by her little doggie, or whatever. She ran around practically nude, and in more than one cartoon danced the hula WITH NO TOP ON. I am not kidding, all she had on was a diminutive Hawaiian lei which shifted back and forth as she shimmied. In this guise she (nonsensically) introduced Popeye in his very first cartoon appearance by DANCING THE HULA with him. Make sense? Never mind, the piggybacking worked, and in the next Popeye cartoon he didn't have to hula at all.

It was dismaying to see what happened to her after 1934, the threshhold for "the Code" that killed everything. Her hemline plunged to her knees, she suddenly had long sleeves and a high neckline, the winsome garter no longer existed, all her clothes (and very dowdy clothes they were) stayed on her body, and all she had left of her old teasing sexy self was the "boop-boop-be-doop" and the spit curls. Thus a '20s icon was destroyed, tamed, and turned into a domestic drudge, winsomely doing housework and selling war bonds.

But we still have pre-Code Betty, a character which I am SURE was not ever meant for kids! Who WAS she meant for, then? Guys who were turned on by a line-drawing of a bizarrelly-proportioned female with next to nothing on? Must have been - or people like me, who just see her as exotic, sweetly rebellious, and totally adorable. 

POSTSCRIPT. I forgot to mention that the little video-ette I made (in slow motion, and with tango music added) was taken from an old Boop cartoon called HA! HA! HA!, and it featured all the characters and a number of inanimate objects getting STONED on laughing gas (thus the vapor shimmering in the air as she dizzily shakes her booty, then literally falls down at the end). The drug connection caused this cartoon to be banned, but it does seem like shutting the barn door after the fact. Why not ban the whole thing? She's about as subversive as a cartoon character gets. 

Creepy comfort: when dolls talk back to you

I just have to dust this one off again. 

Maybe it goes all the way back to voodoo and burning your enemies in effigy, but humanity has always had a very strange relationship with dolls. They're both cuddly and creepy, calling forth a weird mixture of maternal tenderness and hair-raising shock. We don't expect them to talk, and most especially they weren't supposed to talk in Edison's time, which is what made this doll so - unique. The fact that the mechanism inside them (which was actually a teeny-tiny phonograph that played a miniature disc) broke after one or two uses meant that their popularity soon faded. Most of the dolls were returned. A few must have survived more or less intact. It was decades later that Chatty Cathy took over as the most "possessed" doll (meaning, of course, that more little girls owned them) in history. 

I had no interest whatsoever in dolls when I was a child. I was more interested in frogs, toads, newts, snakes, polliwogs, mud puppies, millipedes, salamanders, and anything else that crawled (or barked or whinnied or meowed). I have no idea what has happened to me in the past few years, but my doll collection (if you count the trolls) has boomed, so much so that I don't know how many I have now, and don't want to count. 

I can't account for this, except to say that the reborn doll craze has given rise to dolls that are much more realistic and less creepy (some would say MORE creepy due to the uncanny valley effect) than the staring-eyed, round-headed, stiff-limbed hunks of plastic we used to play with. I've knitted clothes for my dolls, made tons of videos about them, bought more and more of them - and, of course, during the pandemic, have relied on them as a source of comfort. They say we return to the enthusiasms of childhood as old age approaches - but in this case, I seem to have aged backwards, and am catching up on what never appealed to me in childhood.

I still like crawly things, and LOVE birds, which have become a serious interest in the past few years. Sometimes the only thing that pulls my spirits out of a bog of sludge is feeding the red-winged blackbirds at Burnaby Lake. The glossy, sassy males tilt their heads this way and that, their brilliant red and yellow wing patches flaming in the sun. The females, much more practical and industrious, are no-nonsense creatures who get right down to the business of eating, without any flirtation needed.

I can't see ahead right now - can anyone? Are we out of this woods yet? It seems to me it grows darker with every step. Each day HAS to be sufficient unto itself, because I can't plan. We try to focus on how much better our situation is than someone else's - but don't I also bleed for them, my fellow suffering humans? 

For some reason - this is terribly disjointed, sorry - a song jumps back into my head, one that gave me great comfort during another time when I couldn't see ahead. I'd be walking through the woods with this song playing in my ear and try to find some sense in what was happening to me. Mostly I was just trying to stay out of the hospital, and when I was unable to find the light, I had to try to develop a taste for the dark. I don't  know how I survived that time, why those soul-destroying times kept returning, and why I am not in that state now when I suppose I have every reason to be. Maybe the message was finally delivered.

No one is alone

No one here to guide you

Now you're on your own

Only me beside you

Still you're not alone

No one is alone, truly

No one is alone

Sometimes people leave you

Halfway through the wood

Others may deceive you

You decide what's good

You decide alone

But no one is alone

People make mistakes

Fathers, mothers

People make mistakes

Holding to their own

Thinking they're alone

Honour their mistakes

Everybody makes 

One another's

Terrible mistakes

Witches can be right

Giants can be good

You decide what's right 

You decide what's good

Just remember

Someone is on your side

Someone else is not

While we're seeing our side

Maybe we forgot

They are not alone

No one is alone

Hard to see the light now

Just don't let it go

Things will come out right now

That's the best I know

Someone is on your side

No one is alone

Stephen Sondheim

💚I LOVE TURTLES!💚

Some truly outstanding video of three huge turtles sunning themselves on a log in Lake Lafarge, Coquitlam. 

Just Like Dylan's Mr. Jones

Ballad Of A Thin Man

You walk into the room with your pencil in your hand
You see somebody naked and you say, "Who is that man?"
You try so hard but you don't understand
Just what you will say when you get home
Because something is happening here but you don't know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?

You raise up your head and you ask, "Is this where it is?"
And somebody points to you and says, "It's his"
And you say, "What's mine?" and somebody else says, "Well, what is?"
And you say, "Oh my God, am I here all alone?"
But something is happening and you don't know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?

You hand in your ticket and you go watch the geek
Who immediately walks up to you when he hears you speak
And says, "How does it feel to be such a freak?"
And you say, "Impossible!" as he hands you a bone
And something is happening here but you don't know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?

You have many contacts among the lumberjacks
To get you facts when someone attacks your imagination
But nobody has any respect, anyway they already expect you to all give a check
To tax-deductible charity organizations

Ah, you've been with the professors and they've all liked your looks
With great lawyers you have discussed lepers and crooks
You've been through all of F. Scott Fitzgerald's books
You're very well-read, it's well-known
But something is happening here and you don't know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?

Well, the sword swallower, he comes up to you and then he kneels
He crosses himself and then he clicks his high heels
And without further notice, he asks you how it feels
And he says, "Here is your throat back, thanks for the loan"
And you know something is happening but you don't know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?

Now, you see this one-eyed midget shouting the word "Now"
And you say, "For what reason?" and he says, "How"
And you say, "What does this mean?" and he screams back, "You're a cow!
Give me some milk or else go home"
And you know something's happening but you don't know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?

Well, you walk into the room like a camel, and then you frown
You put your eyes in your pocket and your nose on the ground
There ought to be a law against you comin' around
You should be made to wear earphones
'Cause something is happening and you don't know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?

I've wanted to write a commentary on this song for so long, it's hard for me to even remember. Even when I first heard it, when I was maybe 15 years old and stoned out of my mind on alcohol and hashish, I found it kept pushing me away even as it dragged me into its dark and dysphoric core. Its effect is that magnetic, and that frightening. Maybe it can't even be analyzed, but since it's been haunting me so much lately, I will give it a try.

People have debated endlessly about who Mr. Jones is, whether it's Albert Grossman (the manager who boosted Dylan's fame, then took him for a ride that didn't end until the 1980s, when Dylan found out he'd  been swindling him for years), or the journalists who kept asking him lame questions like "Why don't you write protest songs any more?", or the "over-30s" who were then seen as the enemy (Dylan was, after all, only 24 when he recorded this dire masterpiece) - or - or - 

I've always believed, almost from first listening, that this song is autobiographical. It's an attempt to capture the chaotic nightmare he found himself trapped in, bizarrely self-created by an almost grotesque level of fame, the kind that eats people raw.  Dylan by this time looked terrible, was underweight, pale as a ghost, smelled bad (according to the many bios I've read, he's not much of a bather), had hair like a wild bird's nest, didn't eat, slept even less, and was fuelled mainly by cocaine, LSD and speed. The famed "motorcycle accident" that brought this hell to a screeching halt may well have been a planned exit from a lifestyle that was sucking him down into a hellish vortex. Had he continued, he might not even had made it to age 27, when so many rock legends were cruelly harvested.

I don't need to say that Dylan is one of the great minds of our time, but the fact that he squeaked through this drug-soaked period, dragged down by sycophants and hangers-on, attests to both his inner strength and the stable, happy childhood that launched his confoundingly unique artist's life. Say what else you will about him, Dylan is a family man, and it is this solid foundation that has kept him from flying off the edge of the world, both then and now. 

Of all the songs in this particularly fruitful period, when his creativity was in constant overdrive, this one gets closest to expressing the horrifying dystopia he found himself in: the queasy shifting and lurching of reality, the draining and soul-sucking parasitic "relationships" which he knew were false and phony (and LORD how Bob Dylan hates a phony!), and the dissolving of a real sense of self, a lapsing of identity which must be the most frightening experience there is. It is a hollowing-out, a stealing of one's humanity, and Mr. Jones is enmeshed in it, with no idea who, what or where he is at any given moment. Or how to get out.

You raise up your head and you ask, "Is this where it is?"
And somebody points to you and says, "It's his"
And you say, "What's mine?" and somebody else says, "Where what is?"
And you say, "Oh my God, am I here all alone?"
But something is happening and you don't know what it is
Do you, Mr. Jones?

It isn't just the words, which are harrowing enough, but the delivery, which is so full of pain that it's hard to listen to now that I hear Dylan so differently. I'm noticing aspects of his voice in listening to pristine re-released/cleaned-up recordings on a quality headset in the middle of the night, especially when I've had a wee nip of cannabis oil (purely medicinal, but my how it brings those songs into focus). People would complain he was a lousy singer, but particularly at this time in his career, when he was riding out on the far fringes of existence, his voice is so raw that it grabs you where you don't even know you live.

This isn't just dada or nonsense or surrealism or anything else that can be labelled. This is writing on the level of T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland, brought up to date for 1965. Dylan lays heavy on the keyboard on this one - I can tell it's him because he's not a very sophisticated pianist, but wrings the guts out of it anyway, each chord reverberating with a sense of  doom. 

I still haven't gotten it, have I? How can you begin to analyze a song that contains the lines, "You put your eyes in your pocket and your nose on the ground"? This is why I kept not writing about it, though I have analyzed the hell out of Desolation Row and a few others. If Ballad of a Thin Man (and Dylan was practically transparent at this point) were a painting, it would be by Hieronymus Bosch, dismembered human body parts crazily rearranged and reality disassembled and shot all to shit.

I still find it hard to listen to, and that moan at the end seems almost like a last gasp. We know it isn't true, that right at this moment he's probably lounging in one of his many mansions (he owns property all over the world, and why shouldn't he? Who has worked harder to attain what he has and who he is?), coming up to his eightieth birthday, maybe hanging out with some of his family (and at this point we know he has at least six kids and multiple grandkids) - the genius has come full circle and is now living comfortably with people who love him. 

But the shadow remains. This man's eyes are haunted, incandescent with knowledge of things we probably were never supposed to know. The realm of genius is lonely, and at such high altitude the air is rarefied and very thin. He came in with this near-freakish gift, I'm convinced, will go out with it, and never chose it. He has no idea where the songs come from, but knows it's his duty to write them down, work them through, refine them and give them back to the world. 

💥BAM! Man’s hair explodes in radio disaster💥

As a kid, I watched the Little Rascals (which was how the Our Gang comedies were re-branded for TV) every damn day, it seemed, and some of them were strange indeed. Even in the early '60s, this technology seemed ancient and creaky, with radio tubes blowing up and a guy's hair standing on end from electric shock. I retained memories of this particular episode because I couldn't quite forget "that guy", the guy with the hair that kept blowing up. What I had to do here was find the episode (on a very poor-quality video shot by a camcorder off an old 16mm print), isolate and make gifs of the parts with "the guy" in them, string the gifs together, make a video of the long gif, then add music that I thought was appropriate. Then upload it to my YouTube channel. So here are all the best bits, with "the guy".This is my VERY low-tech way of making videos, and it works for me so far. 

Baby Rose troll, my pandemic hair, and - don't despair!

My adorable new trollie, and a few observations on what we can do without during the pandemic - such as, trips to the stylist. I haven't tried to grow out my hair for 40 years, and have had it coloured for 30, so I had no idea what it would look like. I would call it "50 shades of grey", except that now I'm getting used to it and I don't think I want to change the colour. My new troll is very sweet, but my God, where does it end? When my office explodes from troll overload. 

BIZARRE Betty Boop Initiation Dance!😍

The Pogo Cartoon Special that Never Was

This is a strange, a VERY strange YouTube video with the cryptic title WHMTEAHIU. Make sense? It didn't to me, until I realized what I had here. To backtrack a bit, Pogo was wildly popular in the 1950s, but by the '60s times had changed and the long-running comic strip began to run out of steam. Warner Brothers somehow got a deal with cartoonist Walt Kelly to make an animated Pogo TV special - without any creative input from the man himself.

Chuck Jones took over, and though his animation could be inspired (think of the Road Runner cartoons and the Grinch), he just did not GET the eccentricities of Kelly's menagerie from Okefenokee Swamp. The result was simply atrocious, a slick, un-Kelly-esque travesty that just misfired on every level. Pogo's voice was dubbed by June Foray, making him sound like a slightly more precious version of Rocky the Flying Squirrel. The whole thing was a disaster and Kelly fumed, vowing to undo the damage.

Walt Kelly was dying of untreated diabetes by then, had had a leg amputated and was half blind, but was still determined to get his own vision of an animated Pogo on the screen. All we have of this project are preliminary sketches which he put together on his own, without the help of any studio - narrating all the voices himself and hiring his son-in-law to do the music. No one took him up on it, which is a tragedy, for this sketchy, several-frames-per-second story is a small masterpiece in which all his characters come alive. It's Pogo through and through, and gives us a taste of what might have been if Kelly had lived past 60.

I don't know how I ever even found this curiosity with its incomprehensible title. I couldn't find much about it at all, and in fact it was thought to have been lost for decades. It's called an "unlisted" video for reasons unknown. But the title stands for something: We Have Met the Enemy, and He is Us - probably the most famous Kelly-ism of them all. 

This curiosity is remarkable for yet another reason. Its message is environmental. We are ruining the landscape with our carelessness and our greed. At a time (1969) when the only environmental message was, "Give a hoot! Don't pollute!" - or, even worse, "Don't be a litterbug" - Kelly was way ahead of his time.  

YOO HOO, KILLED COCK ROBIN - ? (According to Pogo)