Goings-on These Days

Scientists of space say they have noticed a planet out there that is DOOMED!! Doomed to spiral down and CRASH into its star, with probably pretty nasty burn-up sort of effects, as one could imagine. Or can we? Imagine such a thing? Well, yes, sci-fi writers have imagined such things for fifty years and more. Look up "The Big Eye," a book from the sixties (I believe) which goes into what sorts of changes men and women go thru when a scientist informs them their world is going to end with a bang when a wayward big red planet comes closer and closer and...

Well, you'll have to get the book and read what happens at the end...
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Perhaps yet another sign of endtimes.. but women as beautiful as Ms. Gosselin not only populate TV but also our own humdrum lives. There is, for one example, a 30-year-old girl who visits the pool at my apartment complex (whose name is Sarah, by the way) who is fully as beauteous as Kate and is much more proximate to my situation than any TV screen. She suns herself in a barely legal bikini and enjoys intense male attention.

Sarah tells me she had a guy living with her for several months until she determined that he was already married to another woman.. a woman who began a stalking campaign to get her man back. Apparently this was a success, for he went back home to her, but Sarah shrugged the whole thing off.

"I don't go in for dating these days," says sexy Sarah. "I met him at a bar, and bar things never seem to work out."

Being 58 and 28 years beyond Sarah in life experience I'm a bit too old to pursue any sort of relationship with her, but take my word, SOMEBODY will.. it's a simple matter of time and who she picks next.

Women are the gatekeepers and are the ones to say when (and thus have no restrictions) but men have to self-govern themselves to maintain their integrity when faced with a "come-hither" from dangerous beauties. I'm not assigning blame or anything, but facts are facts and if a man does not take responsibility for himself, look out.

A Concerted Effort

A Tribute

A GREAT MAN..

A GREAT AMERICAN..

A GREATNEST OF HEART..

A GREATNEST OF VISION..

REQUIEST ET PACE..

2009

For Labor Day weekend (hopefully the Sunday thereof) I've invited family and friends over to the apartment complex where I have taken up residence, Canterbury House Apartments.

Canterbury has over two hundred (!) units in it, organized into Buildings, each with a number, and one-, two-, and three-bedroom townhouse-style units in each, with letters running from A to S.

Got all that? Well, I'm in Building 339, Apartment Q, and this is near the end of the building, with a porch letting out into a resident parking lot.

A few steps away, off the back of the complex property, is a woods. There is a place I can dig for earthworms to go fishing with, and a clear area where, if the weather cooperates, I will set up a luau-style party outside for my guests. Planned: pork loins (catered by a local downtown bistro famous for them--Darryl's Downtown in Jackson), fresh sliced pineapple, rice and sweet potato casseroles (individual ones--classy and freezeable), and, of all goes well, a special French-bread spicy garlic bread of my own invention. Cool, huh? And not as expensive as all that sounds since Darryl's promised to help out with the thing a bit for the advertising, as it were. You know, where did THIS come from? And you tell everybody if they like it where to get more.

Anyhow, the regional office of the company which owns Canterbury was consulted and they said, "WHOA! absolutely NO open pit fires or bonfires!!" Consequently I had to come up with an alternative to the traditional luau format.

For $2.50 (closeout at CVS Pharmacy) I picked up a bamboo hawaian torch, and then I designed a barbecue setup (pictured above) to be made from found materials. My brother Bob supplied the empty oil drum (he's had two of them dating back to the eighties when we had an oil company) and I found an electric sheet metal cutter for $10 at a garage sale, and I plan on making my grill in time for the party.

Back in the '70's we threw a Labor Day yard party for the staff of Portage Lake State Park where I worked as a Park Ranger, and then we took an empty drum and sliced it in half length-wise to make two grills. This is different, but the new design should work as well and be transportable back to the complex garage area by dolly, so there you go!

Today's Fractal

Oh-oh, bad me, I can't resist playing.

(See more--much more--computer art by Mary and myself in Nerd Shots, another blog. Click HERE to go see.)

How Quickly We Forget

Ok, ok, what POSSIBLE link could there be between a somewhat faded Pop star and the onset of dementia?? It's a teaser. Actually it doesn't matter WHO the celebrity face you choose to use but if you want to test for Alzheimer's condition, researches suggest that the ability to recognize famous faces tells you a lot.

Are you good with names and faces? Hmmm? Well, here's the slight difficulty I have with this new theory about testing for dementia using this method. I remember conversations really well, almost like a tape recorder, but I have trouble remembering the full lyrics to songs, even ones I write myself. I can remember faces from YEARS ago, but screw up the names associated with those faces. I can remember all sorts of historical trivia and I have a good brain for quotations BUT knowing WHO said what.. and when? Ring the gong, I'm toast.

Dates are an especially irrelevant thing with me. Just not important. I don't TRY to capture that info and hold it so I never can feed it back. When did I eat last? who knows. What year was the Magna Carta signed? go ask somebody who cares. In what year was I born? AHH! I can answer that. (Exceptions to every rule, kiddies.. people DEMAND that info from me so I'm FORCED to spew it back.)

I like it when people remember my date of birth and wish me well but if it wasn't for intensive interrogation over the years I probably wouldn't give a darn about THAT date either.

Memory, according to Einstein, is finite, and he disregarded a lot of things for fear of clogging up his mind with things that weren't relevant to more important things. But I kind of disagree with that. Memory is one thing but I look on TIME as the most finite thing there is, and that it is a tragedy to waste ANY of it..

..like the time wasted trying to remember where I put my keys.......

Farm by Moonlight

by Mary Stebbins Tait, digital smudge painting, new today.

Ghosts in the Wave

My lovely Leaflady snapped this shot of a big breaking wave and said to me, "Do you see a ghost?"

Actually, blown up..? Several!

Word is, out there in the Great Beyond, there has been a wayward planet sighted. This sucker revolves BACKWARDS around its star, the reverse of the direction of every other known planet. On such a world there may be unknown effects, but we can speculate:

1. Elvis is not dead.. he's running for President of the American Medical Association following his discovery of a blanket cure for heart disease.. peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
2. George W. Bush has just been appointed Prime Minister of Lithuania.
3. Madonna Cicone has received the Pope's blessing and proceedings are underway to nominate her for sainthood. (And she IS a virgin, but doesn't feel like one.)
4. Pete Rose is elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
5. Alice Cooper is Mayor of Detroit, his home town, following a landside vote that enjoyed the full support of the Archbishop of Detroit, the head curator of the Detroit Institute of Arts, and St. Madonna Cicone.
6. Superman has athlete's foot.
7. Batman is portrayed by Jack Nicholson in the latest installment of the movie series, opposed by Joker, portrayed by Rachel Ray, who wields poisoned pumpkin pies.
8. There is, and always has been, Peace on Earth.

A Beauty Treated Beastily

"We'll let Paris' cherry-adorned dress slide, but her cheesy plastic earrings and overly bronzed skin are unforgivable."

Well, I'm sorry, but this here dude disagrees. Ms. Hilton may not be the sharpest tool in the shed but she knows style. Anybody saying otherwise is just attempting to draw attention to their own snarkiness. (Meow! Hiss! Spat! Splat!) Photo by Campos/X17 Online

Graphic work: M.Serafin