Igor says... UPDATED WITH VIDEO Happy Halloween. I love this holiday. I love seeing the little tykes all dressed up and excited about walking around the streets after dark collecting candy. When we all lived in Noho, my dear friends had the best house for trick or treaters and I always spent the evening there passing out the sweets to the little sweeties. We've all moved since but they still send me the best cards.

Bonus Halloween treat: Igor spins if this video upload thingy works.

I'm astounded the thread hasn't broken yet.

Quick shots

I just haven't been to get into blogging today. I don't know what it is about going to the doctor that exhausts me so, but it always takes me a whole day to recover from a simple appointment. I spent the whole afternoon getting a mammogram yesterday. The procedure takes about three minutes. The driving, paperwork and waiting around in airless, windowless rooms takes freaking hours and nothing of any great interest happened.

Anyway, here's a couple of news items of slight interest. This first one is kind of funny in a macabre way. Dog shoots man. A kind of tragic accident but the hunter will survive. He might want to take his dogs to the next gun safety class though.

Meanwhile, the Governator made a bold statement yesterday. "Schwarzenegger told a GQ magazine interviewer that he "didn't take any drugs" and explained when asked about his past admissions of marijuana use that "that is not a drug. It's a leaf."

Unfortunately, the Ahnuld missed the boat on staking out new ground in the war on marijuana. His press secretary was quick to issue a statement saying Ahnuld was just joking around and really does take the scourge of drugs very seriously. Too bad. A bold stand by somebody like Schwarzenegger could bring some badly needed common sense to the debate.

Odd lots

Avedon calls them follys. The official term is outsider art. Me, I just call them awesome. I always wanted to devote my life to building something like this.

Also via Avedon, just in case you were having trouble telling the difference,Don't be confused.

Meanwhile, who doesn't love gossip? An unnamed member of the royal family was targeted by a blackmailer who allegedly had photos of the unnamed royal personage having sex and passing around cocaine. I'm guessing it was Prince William.

And I stumbled this today. This is very cool. A guy found a 3.92-carat at this state park in Arkansas. I've never heard of it before, Crater of Diamond State Park but this is just my kind of gig. I've been wanting to do this since I found out about Herkimer diamonds. but these are real ones as far as I can tell. I think I have to go to Arkansas.

I love rock collecting and you get a chance to come home with something like the Uncle Sam Diamond. That would be fun.

Quick hits

I'm having a weird day so here's something to entertain you while I'm gone.

Avedon points me to this Autumn flickr galery that is really nice.

And Waxing Nostalgic is posted at my other blog. Noho readers might especially enjoy that one as it features local hero Chris Collingwood.

And a very silly game for Halloween that's sort of like a elementary Mario Bros thing. Squiggley's Halloween Ghost Walk or something.

Withdrawal symptoms

Yikes what a day. I'm in my relentless funk to start and the cable goes out last night and doesn't come back on until 5:00pm today. No internet, no TV. I don't own a radio. My life in on the internets. I was cast adrift. No news. No weather. It's pouring rain so forget the walk. And did I mention I forgot to refill my tranq script until the last minute and discovered it had expired?

I had to resort to house work. I organized all sorts of things including my winter and summer clothes. I put my three dollar wreath together and it worked pretty well. I'll take a photo if the sun ever comes out again. And I hung up Igor, my rubber bat, for Halloween on the hummingbird feeder hook. That was my satisfying project today.

I've had Igor a really long time, maybe 20 years. He used to have a rubber band thingy on his back but that eventually broke so I now I use black thread. The thread is probably 10 years by now. Nonetheless, I hung him up and he's been spinning for hours now. It's so cool. It looks like he's flying in circles. He may never stop.

I'm going to see if I can find my skelton for the door tomorrow.

A promotion

Check it out, I'm a figurehead. I have a title. You can see me on the sidebar. I've been promoted to Assistant Editor at The Reaction. Fortunately, since my stellar co-bloggers don't really require any editing, the job requires very little in the way of actual work. What could be better?

Halloweeny

Okay, I know you're just dying for a new time waster. Thanks to my pal Irma, I've got just the thing -- Halloween Hangman, an animated version based on that old game you played for hours with your friends as a kid.

If you're too young to remember the game, think of it as a snarky version of Wheel of Fortune.

Living in Limbo



I couldn't find a video of Jimmy Cliff but this is the song in my head tonight. The slide show with this soundtrack of it is actually really good and probably sums up my mood better than footage of the rasta mon would have.

72 loving whacks to the tukkus

Am I the only one who remembers the old custom of spanking the birthday boy or girl? The rule was you get as many whacks as your age. I suppose nowadays you would get arrested for assault or something, so the custom seems to have faded into history but I'm resurrecting it in honor of my dear friend, Jules Siegel's birthday. Fortunately, since I only have to deliver them in the cyber-sense, my old rotator cuff injury is unlikely to get aggravated by the effort. Happy birthday my dear.

You can see his handsome self and his lovely family at the link.

Eyes on you

I spent half the night looking at old files on the 'puter last night and unearthed a treasure trove of webcams that I had saved. In case you're one of the readers who hate my politics and kindly refrains from reading my poliblog to avoid being overcome with the urge to throttle me, I'm going to crosspost the links.

Things are looking rather quiet at Christiansted Harbor in tropical St. Croix.

Of course, if you're looking at this during the daylight hours in the US, it's nightime right now in Hamburg, Germany but it's a cityscape so there's usually something going on in the square.

The same thing is true at this one in Prudnik, Poland.

The Tokyo Diner on the other hand, is busy right now so I guess it's more or less daytime there. I'm not very good with timezones.

If you prefer the US for voyerism, this cam at The Pink Pony on the Alabama Gulf coast has a controllable view. You can get some close up shots of the beachgoers.

And finally, what happens in Vegas may stay in Vegas, but that doesn't mean that nobody is watching. Webcam is on 24/7 in a city that never sleeps.

Also, if you promise not to look at the rest of the blog, here's a link to my latest waxing nostaligic music vid. Strange Brew.

Stolen meme

I am for sunsets that turn my world pink

I am against pollution

I am for rainbows

I am against nanny laws

I am for Hungarian goulash

I am against tripe soup

I am for helium balloons

I am against litter

I am for parties

I am against vandalism

I am for idle chit chat

I am against ethnic jokes

I am for empathy

I am against betrayal

I am for the internet

I am for blogging

I am for cyberfriends

I am for Erin O'Brien.

Are you a bad person if...

Okay, a hypothetical question. Say you were really good friends with someone for a long time. And then that person totally burned the bridge between you. I mean, stabbed you in the back, said horrible things about you to your common friends and called you a total small time loser. And then you discover a couple of years later that you now have a better internet rankings than he does.

Are you a bad person if you take a tiny bit of satisfaction from that?

Wasting time...



I'm sorry kids. I know I've been away too long but I'm going through stuff right now that I can't talk about. All I can tell you is I'm in a black depression. My future is dark and uncertain and I don't remember ever feeling quite this sad. This song is saying what's roiling in my soul tonight.

But not to worry. I'll get over it. In the meantime, I can just entertain you with links to places more amusing than this one is right now. This one I found at Tits place is addictive, the google image labeler. I explain how it works, here.

There was a miracle sighting of Pope Paul waving from the grave.

This is one of those optical illusions that will drive you crazy. I can see her going in both directions and once I overcame my fixed expectation, it definitely looks like she switches randomly on her own and not on anything I do with focusing my eyes. I might note for those who try this at home that it does help to focus just on her feet. It’s the head turning and breasts that fools the brain I think.

And if you just feel like looking at something really beautiful, here's a gallery of Microphotography. Very cool photos. Found at Avedon's place, who by the way has a terrific Flickr gallery of her own. Most of the shots are of her garden and other sights in England.

Oh you say you want cute? I got cute for you. Check out Kee's kittens. Keep scrolling. He's got a lot of shots.

Rich and Flo



My dear friends who are fabulous musicians that never perform live with a really fun website. You like pumpkins, they have pumpkins, not to mention a toilet paper museum. That's them playing in the video.

Make sure you click on the music at the home page before you start cruising around. You really can get lost for hours inside and you might as well have a soundtrack.

God Bless the Child



I'm in a mood. This is all I have to say tonight.

Two things

I'm in a terrible funk today but I just stumbled across this item I saved for you. I'm of the age where I read the obits pretty regularly but rarely read the police reports in my old local paper. At this point, my friends are much more likely to die than be arrested. But for some reason I clicked on the briefs and found this report.

A 16-year-old male was arrested Saturday at 7:18 p.m. on Pearl Street on the charge of being a stubborn juvenile, according to police.

Being "a stubborn juvenile" is a crime? How is it then that so many of them are still walking the streets and gathering in the malls? I would think there couldn't be more than a few that don't fit that description.

Meanwhile, my bad week just won't quit and I can't think of anything else to tell you except I don't believe I've ever felt as alone in the world as I do at this very moment.

Barely kicking

Once again, I'm apologizing for failing to show up as promised. I'm going to stop promising. It seems to be a jinx. I had a rugged week. I spent half of it fighting off a bad case of broncitis. I lost but fortunately I had to go to the doctor for my overdue annual physical and he gave me a Zpac. I'm amazed at the advances in antibiotics. The last time I took them I remember getting a bottle full of pills that I had to take several times a day for a week. This zippy little Zpac is six pills over five days. My kind of regime. I'm on day three and feeling much better but family issues came up in the interim, so, it's always something...

Of course I have been thinking of you and saving up my little vignettes. I haven't had a bird story in a long time but just the other night. I decided to stop at Wendy's for take out because I was too lazy to even nuke anything. I went inside because the car line was so long, I thought it would be quicker. It probably wasn't. That franchise is pathetically inefficient but at least I wasn't burning up the ozone waiting in line. But anyway, I came out and it was just that time of twilight where the sky is really pale blue, and there must have been 500 swallows sitting on the wires and covering an adjacent parking lot.

The guys on the wires suddenly took flight as I made my way to the car. It was like watching a storm closd as they swung and swooped and rotated in formation. I watched them for a long time and was amazed that no one else noticed. I finally pointed them out to the guy in the car parked next to me. We both watched until the dark got dark and they settled back onto the wires.

And I don't know if I ever told you about the huge black dragonfly I saw last month or maybe it was at the end of August but the last time I saw it, I remember thinking how weird it was that it looked like its wings were rotating like a helicopter instead of the customary hummingbird like flapping, but damn if there haven't been other sightings.

And I haven't forgotten I promised a funny story about my medical adventures but tonight is definitely not the night for it so let me pass on the latest news on the drug war instead. Holland has just banned mushrooms because some young person died after taking some. There's not indication that they took into consideration multiple drug and alcohol abuse, which is common in the problematic cases, but they simply blamed the shrooms.

This will of course simply drive the market underground and there will be more unfortunate incidents and a new black market will drive more crime. They've been selling shrooms in Amsterdam for decades and the number of incidents in comparison to the use is negligible. It they used the same criteria for alcohol, booze would have been banned a long time ago. Once again, politicians pander to the short term political advantage over the long term public good. It's sad to see Holland regress like this.

Men who rocked my world

Wherein I wax nostalgic about my past, along with video.

Yesterday

All my troubles seemed so far away.... Today, not so much. While I pull myself together enough to finish my doctor story, here's some shots I took yesterday.


Those of you who know me well, will appreciate the enormonity of my having taken this shot of the sunrise. I actually see the sun rise a lot lately. For some reason, I'm on this weird schedule that I can't kick unless I've had several days off in a row and I go to bed by 10:00 and get up at dawn.

This is an especially good one but forget about that old saw, red sky in morning - sailor take warning. We didn't see a drop of rain yesterday.



I did however see this really strange rainbow when I came home last evening. It was only visible from that one spot in the McCompound and I was thinking it was more a sunspot kind of thing. Anyway it was very cool to see. That one particular spot is also the best place to watch the sunset. For some reason the sun looks much bigger there than it does only few hundred feet farther down where I live.



And finally, tis the season. Some of the first floor apartments really go all out for yard decorations, even though as I recall it's against the rules but no one seems to follow most of them here anyway. This shot is little too tight to do the whole arrangement justice but I wanted to get a good shot of the statuary. These folks also have the absolute best Halloween wreath I've ever seen. It's simply psychedelic. I'm hoping to get a good shot of it if the sun comes out this weekend.

Still alive

Seems I'm always asking you to forgive me my cherished remaining readers. It's been a tough week. I can't shake this chest cold and it's worn me out to the point where I haven't even looked to see if you've been talking to me this week. Then I finally decide to check in briefly before I leave for work and Haloscan is down so if I haven't answered you, it's not because I don't love you all dearly. I'm just old and tired.

Meanwhile, I've just got to crawl through today and I think I really have some time off so I'll be back to finish my story and regale you with the new stuff, such as it is. The most exciting news is that Cernig has scored an interview with Gen. Petraeus' press spokesman for the Newshoggers. As far as I know this will be the first time the Pentagon has agreed to speak on a blog that basically opposes the occupation.

Boylan has already showed up in comments to another Cernig post, which is how the interview request came about. It will be interesting to see if Boylan goes through with it. I hope he does. I think it will make for a good discussion.

Anyway, I love you all dearly. I'll be back.