Weblog 334
July 8, 2012~ 12:00 am
(It's not REALLY the 8th yet).... it's just that I'm SO BEASTLY HOT here, bogged down with humidity, that I'm putting this up early tonight so I can crawl back into my air-conditioned lair and read. LOL!!)
During this heat wave hell, one of the things that saves my sanity is cruising the internet to find something to tickle my fancy, so late at night when things begin to cool down, I do image searches looking for strangeness... and HERE'S what popped up.
It's called
Sperm Bank
Naturally, I was immediately intrigued and I followed it to its website where I found this one as well, called- "THAT'S ALL FOLKS"
(a whimsical take on Michelangelo's 'Creation'..... only in this one, God's turning out the lights on the whole shebang. LOL!!!) Where did these fanciful dioramas come from? Well, they were generated by a very unique fella by the name of Gerald Matthews who's a retired actor and an engaging artist, and he's set up his own showplace in Walla Walla Washington, called
The Museum of Un-Natural
History
His collection is bizarre, witty, and simply a delight to browse. (And he's got some social commentary going on there as well.) His colorful pieces are like candies laid out for me, just waiting for my selection. Enlarging each thumbnail is a joy. In Jerry's own words, his museum is a mixture of 'Dadaism, Surrealism & Absurdism'- (and I can just tell I'd LOVE this guy if the opportunity to meet up with him ever presented itself. He has 'HAPPY' written all over his face:)
Whereas.... this sweaty face has been sorely miserable for the past nine days contending with JUNGLE WEATHER. (I'm surprised I'm not suffering from some tropical disease at this point like malaria or all-over fungal infections.) It's sheer MURDER out there- (and IN HERE as well, other than the aforementioned bedroom cave of coolness.)
I did eat dinner with my beloved husband on Friday and Saturday, and on Saturday he got to see what it feels like when someone says, 'BOY, DO YOU SWEAT!' lol
We ate dinner at the 'Silk Road', and I swear he's some sort of a 'celebrity' in there. The staff is always fussing over him, noting this or that about his height, his hair, his weight.... and Saturday evening, the first words out of the hostess' mouth were, 'BOY, DO YOU SWEAT!' We both busted out laughing.
After we were seated, I leaned across the table and said, "You're the Shogun," and Wayne howled.
I brought home a nice sized doggie bag of vegetable fried rice. I love that stuff reheated. I'll have some tomorrow, since Mum will be going to the family's yearly reunion picnic, and I won't be dining at the Personal Care home with her. (My whole clan enjoys a good reunion, but I am not one for 'catch up' and mingling. I believe I've opted out the last 20 years or so. It's just not my thing-- I'm an oddball as well as a loner.)
Despite the heat, on Saturday Wayne and I were both in pretty good moods and decided to go ahead and watch the film I'd rented from Netflix. I'd anticipated a moving, tight drama. Since the story was based on real events, I felt sure the narrative would be a compelling and engaging one. We watched
With two excellent actors like Cuba Gooding and Terrence Howard, how could it miss?... yet it missed by a mile.
HORRIBLE script, wooden, stereotyped characters, and a most unfortunate choice of having much of the interaction between those characters happen as they are sitting in their cockpits delivering predictable lines that read like 1950's television dialogue.
What can I say? The movie was terribly written and embarrassingly corny.
And that's really too bad because the REAL RED TAILS, the Tuskegee Airmen, deserve far better than that for having gone- in Star Trek parlance, 'where no men have gone before'- by fighting on two fronts: the European theater of WWII as well as 1940's racism. Here's a picture of the real deal, shown here posing with songstress, Lena Horne.
They deserved as good a film as the one Cuba Gooding had starred in once before- 'Men of Honor' (which profiled the extreme racial prejudice in the Marine Corps ultra-select underwater demolition team. Now THAT was drama.) THAT was a film that paid true homage to the kind of bravery it takes to break racial barriers in the most trying of circumstances.
Even though 'Red Tails' is a Hollywood-type stinker of a film, the MEN THEMSELVES are heroes through and through, and here's a few of them
finally getting the recognition they deserve in their 80's and 90's, honored by President Obama. FINALLY.
Bravo!!! A big salute of gratitude to each and every one of them... better late than never... (I only wish their movie had done them justice.)
Now....... it's off to bed with me. There's been enough perspiration shed for one day.... and maybe a SCORE of days. {{{{{{{{collapse}}}}}}}}
July 9, 2012~ 4:45 pm
The heat FINALLY broke today! After 10 days of 90+ with staggering humidity, today is a reasonable 84, at this hottest time of the day, and moisture cut down to 31 percent humidity and 50 dewpoint. HOORAY!!!!!
The house is cooling off, but slowly yet. It'll take tonight's dip into the low 60's to do the job right, but I am hopeful that tomorrow morning this downstairs will feel WONDERFUL.
Yesterday, before surrendering to bed in the late afternoon, I still continued my search for 'absurdist art'. What I found was that a LOT of what is labeled 'absurd'..... is actually kind of scary to me. Mostly stills of films in that genre, but hauntingly 'off' to me. Spookily so. Like this.....
I know that is supposed to be 'funny' in some way, but... maybe it's the coloring, maybe it's how REAL everything else looks.... but I find that guy somewhat 'chilling'.
Like a Twilight Zone episode where someone swivels around in their office chair, expecting to see good old, reliable 'Pete' (or 'Joe', or 'Kevin')..... but no, instead..... there's this....thing standing there!
And this next one is worse for me. On the surface of things it's a man in a hat, standing on a path in the forest.
To ME, the whole picture looks threatening. It looks like some weird, vagrant preacher suddenly showing up on a path in dense woods out of nowhere, who begins this frightening, strident PREACHING, face raised to heaven, and there I am......stuck. Somehow I KNOW he can out-run me, because he's 'off'.... he's not quite right. Not quite human. He's scary.
(Did I have nightmares last night?) Nope. Slept like a baby. Maybe that's because I viewed the nightmares and let the boogie man out BEFORE I crawled into bed. LOL!! I didn't let those images ferment way down there in the subconscious, no.... I LOOKED at 'em, by God. I shook them in their sack, then closed 'em back up.
July 12, 2012~ 8:00 pm
Exhausted here. It's heating up again outside, and on my commute back from work, on my way to visit my mother at the Home, my ramp off of Route 28 to get me on the Veteran's Bridge, was f*cking CLOSED!
There is NOTHING more frightening than encountering a forest of orange cones on an interstate, then a tangle of green traffic signs that label snaked off routes to places you DON'T WANT TO GO.... and have no idea how to return from if taken. "TO THE AIRPORT"..."TO RT. 65"....I was in a cold sweat and traveling 50 miles and hour, cars whipping past me, all KNOWING WHERE THEY ARE.
I trusted my inner flight map and kept turning when I saw anything that looked like downtown Pittsburgh. I got there, found my way over to the South Side, and though I was running about 10 minutes behind schedule, I took a 'short cut' up a goat trail to get to Castle Shannon Blvd to avoid the Rt. 88 backlog of stalled traffic.
(I thought.) And what did I encounter? The first time on that shortcut ever?
A f*cking TRAIN!
Red lights flashing, car after car after car, as I sat for a full 6 minutes watching freight cars pull past. LOL!!! Honest to Pete! The same shortcut I've taken TONS of times before today, brought me straight to a moving MILE OF BOXCARS AND TANKERS. LOL!!
(Mum was sleeping sweetly in her easy chair when I got there about 15 minutes late.) We watched some loud, trashy TV show where they give lie-detector tests and DNA results to straying boyfriends and husbands, while I munched on M&M filled cookies I brought her on Tuesday. At the end of the visit on the way home (same shortcut)....... DING! DING! DING!..... THE EVENING 5 o'clock double long trolley was coming through, so once again I sat. Through TWO.... trolleys going both ways. I sat and waited for those striped arms to rise and let the cars through again.
What a snarled up day! {{{{{{{PLOP!}}}}}}}
***
(Return To Weekly Archives)
(It's not REALLY the 8th yet).... it's just that I'm SO BEASTLY HOT here, bogged down with humidity, that I'm putting this up early tonight so I can crawl back into my air-conditioned lair and read. LOL!!)
During this heat wave hell, one of the things that saves my sanity is cruising the internet to find something to tickle my fancy, so late at night when things begin to cool down, I do image searches looking for strangeness... and HERE'S what popped up.
Sperm Bank
Naturally, I was immediately intrigued and I followed it to its website where I found this one as well, called- "THAT'S ALL FOLKS"
(a whimsical take on Michelangelo's 'Creation'..... only in this one, God's turning out the lights on the whole shebang. LOL!!!) Where did these fanciful dioramas come from? Well, they were generated by a very unique fella by the name of Gerald Matthews who's a retired actor and an engaging artist, and he's set up his own showplace in Walla Walla Washington, called
History
His collection is bizarre, witty, and simply a delight to browse. (And he's got some social commentary going on there as well.) His colorful pieces are like candies laid out for me, just waiting for my selection. Enlarging each thumbnail is a joy. In Jerry's own words, his museum is a mixture of 'Dadaism, Surrealism & Absurdism'- (and I can just tell I'd LOVE this guy if the opportunity to meet up with him ever presented itself. He has 'HAPPY' written all over his face:)
Whereas.... this sweaty face has been sorely miserable for the past nine days contending with JUNGLE WEATHER. (I'm surprised I'm not suffering from some tropical disease at this point like malaria or all-over fungal infections.) It's sheer MURDER out there- (and IN HERE as well, other than the aforementioned bedroom cave of coolness.)
I did eat dinner with my beloved husband on Friday and Saturday, and on Saturday he got to see what it feels like when someone says, 'BOY, DO YOU SWEAT!' lol
We ate dinner at the 'Silk Road', and I swear he's some sort of a 'celebrity' in there. The staff is always fussing over him, noting this or that about his height, his hair, his weight.... and Saturday evening, the first words out of the hostess' mouth were, 'BOY, DO YOU SWEAT!' We both busted out laughing.
After we were seated, I leaned across the table and said, "You're the Shogun," and Wayne howled.
I brought home a nice sized doggie bag of vegetable fried rice. I love that stuff reheated. I'll have some tomorrow, since Mum will be going to the family's yearly reunion picnic, and I won't be dining at the Personal Care home with her. (My whole clan enjoys a good reunion, but I am not one for 'catch up' and mingling. I believe I've opted out the last 20 years or so. It's just not my thing-- I'm an oddball as well as a loner.)
Despite the heat, on Saturday Wayne and I were both in pretty good moods and decided to go ahead and watch the film I'd rented from Netflix. I'd anticipated a moving, tight drama. Since the story was based on real events, I felt sure the narrative would be a compelling and engaging one. We watched
With two excellent actors like Cuba Gooding and Terrence Howard, how could it miss?... yet it missed by a mile.
HORRIBLE script, wooden, stereotyped characters, and a most unfortunate choice of having much of the interaction between those characters happen as they are sitting in their cockpits delivering predictable lines that read like 1950's television dialogue.
What can I say? The movie was terribly written and embarrassingly corny.
And that's really too bad because the REAL RED TAILS, the Tuskegee Airmen, deserve far better than that for having gone- in Star Trek parlance, 'where no men have gone before'- by fighting on two fronts: the European theater of WWII as well as 1940's racism. Here's a picture of the real deal, shown here posing with songstress, Lena Horne.
They deserved as good a film as the one Cuba Gooding had starred in once before- 'Men of Honor' (which profiled the extreme racial prejudice in the Marine Corps ultra-select underwater demolition team. Now THAT was drama.) THAT was a film that paid true homage to the kind of bravery it takes to break racial barriers in the most trying of circumstances.
Even though 'Red Tails' is a Hollywood-type stinker of a film, the MEN THEMSELVES are heroes through and through, and here's a few of them
finally getting the recognition they deserve in their 80's and 90's, honored by President Obama. FINALLY.
Bravo!!! A big salute of gratitude to each and every one of them... better late than never... (I only wish their movie had done them justice.)
Now....... it's off to bed with me. There's been enough perspiration shed for one day.... and maybe a SCORE of days. {{{{{{{{collapse}}}}}}}}
July 9, 2012~ 4:45 pm
The heat FINALLY broke today! After 10 days of 90+ with staggering humidity, today is a reasonable 84, at this hottest time of the day, and moisture cut down to 31 percent humidity and 50 dewpoint. HOORAY!!!!!
The house is cooling off, but slowly yet. It'll take tonight's dip into the low 60's to do the job right, but I am hopeful that tomorrow morning this downstairs will feel WONDERFUL.
Yesterday, before surrendering to bed in the late afternoon, I still continued my search for 'absurdist art'. What I found was that a LOT of what is labeled 'absurd'..... is actually kind of scary to me. Mostly stills of films in that genre, but hauntingly 'off' to me. Spookily so. Like this.....
I know that is supposed to be 'funny' in some way, but... maybe it's the coloring, maybe it's how REAL everything else looks.... but I find that guy somewhat 'chilling'.
Like a Twilight Zone episode where someone swivels around in their office chair, expecting to see good old, reliable 'Pete' (or 'Joe', or 'Kevin')..... but no, instead..... there's this....thing standing there!
And this next one is worse for me. On the surface of things it's a man in a hat, standing on a path in the forest.
To ME, the whole picture looks threatening. It looks like some weird, vagrant preacher suddenly showing up on a path in dense woods out of nowhere, who begins this frightening, strident PREACHING, face raised to heaven, and there I am......stuck. Somehow I KNOW he can out-run me, because he's 'off'.... he's not quite right. Not quite human. He's scary.
(Did I have nightmares last night?) Nope. Slept like a baby. Maybe that's because I viewed the nightmares and let the boogie man out BEFORE I crawled into bed. LOL!! I didn't let those images ferment way down there in the subconscious, no.... I LOOKED at 'em, by God. I shook them in their sack, then closed 'em back up.
July 12, 2012~ 8:00 pm
Exhausted here. It's heating up again outside, and on my commute back from work, on my way to visit my mother at the Home, my ramp off of Route 28 to get me on the Veteran's Bridge, was f*cking CLOSED!
There is NOTHING more frightening than encountering a forest of orange cones on an interstate, then a tangle of green traffic signs that label snaked off routes to places you DON'T WANT TO GO.... and have no idea how to return from if taken. "TO THE AIRPORT"..."TO RT. 65"....I was in a cold sweat and traveling 50 miles and hour, cars whipping past me, all KNOWING WHERE THEY ARE.
I trusted my inner flight map and kept turning when I saw anything that looked like downtown Pittsburgh. I got there, found my way over to the South Side, and though I was running about 10 minutes behind schedule, I took a 'short cut' up a goat trail to get to Castle Shannon Blvd to avoid the Rt. 88 backlog of stalled traffic.
(I thought.) And what did I encounter? The first time on that shortcut ever?
Red lights flashing, car after car after car, as I sat for a full 6 minutes watching freight cars pull past. LOL!!! Honest to Pete! The same shortcut I've taken TONS of times before today, brought me straight to a moving MILE OF BOXCARS AND TANKERS. LOL!!
(Mum was sleeping sweetly in her easy chair when I got there about 15 minutes late.) We watched some loud, trashy TV show where they give lie-detector tests and DNA results to straying boyfriends and husbands, while I munched on M&M filled cookies I brought her on Tuesday. At the end of the visit on the way home (same shortcut)....... DING! DING! DING!..... THE EVENING 5 o'clock double long trolley was coming through, so once again I sat. Through TWO.... trolleys going both ways. I sat and waited for those striped arms to rise and let the cars through again.
What a snarled up day! {{{{{{{PLOP!}}}}}}}
(Return To Weekly Archives)
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