Wait! What?

These scenes made me do a double take while out running errands today.

Have a seat; the wait shouldn't be too long.

I guess somebody thought they were cold.

Guardian gnomes, posted to prevent dish theft, perhaps?

© 2015 by A. Roy Hilbinger 

Ahhhhhhhhh!

Yes indeed! That's me relaxing with a pint of fine ale in the Archie Bunker chair after a particularly stressful weekend. Spring has arrived and business in the garden center at the Shippensburg Lowe's has ramped up dramatically. Naturally, being a big box store, we're drastically understaffed to keep up with both customer service and restocking. Hence the Archie Bunker chair and the beer today. And the lunch that went with that beer below:

Yeah, I tend to avoid the pre-cut ham usually available; I buy a chunk of ham and slice it myself with a knife, not a machine. I like thick slices. Supper this evening follows in the same hedonistic footsteps: broiled salmon, roasted baby red potatoes, and steamed broccoli, washed down with a nice Pinot Grigio. Easy to cook, easy to eat, and eminently tasty! I enjoy my relaxation.

Today also happens to be Earth Day. Now I normally don't tend to celebrate the day here since most of my posts tend to deal with the glory and sacredness of Mama Gaia. But I just happened to take some pictures in my wanderings today that are appropriate to the celebration of the wonders of creation: a female Red-winged Blackbird eying me warily; some Painted Turtles doing same; a Rainbow Trout swimming in the north duck pond of the Dykeman Springs wetlands; and a mating pair of Mallards on the same pond. Enjoy!

© 2013 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut...

It's hot, it's hazy, and it's humid. Today is particularly soupy, with a front on the way pushing all that wet air in front of it; it rained twice so far, once this morning and once this afternoon, and after each one the sun came out and made steam. Bleah! So I've been a bit loopy. 

I immediately downed two mugs of iced tea, one after the other, after I got home, and then thought what the hell and opened a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale (my favorite beer). And while cruising the Internet I had the TV on and an old "Cold Case" came on, this one centered around The Rocky Horro Picture Show, and the next thing you know I'm bopping around the living room belting out "Let's Do the Time Warp Again", just like the old days back in Newport at the weekly Friday night showing of the movie. And that gave me the idea of posting my favorite wacky music videos. So, let's do the Time Warp again, shall we?

 

I'm a major Queen fan, so much so that I still miss Freddie and keep track of Brian May (he's Dr. Brian May these days, PhD in astrophysics and chancellor of a university in England, but still plays concerts). And by far the wackiest song (they did lots of wacky songs, but this is by far the weirdest and most fun) they did is "Bohemian Rhapsody".

And the wackiest fun ever to be had with "Bohemian Rhapsody" is the scene based around it in the movie Waynes' World. Yeah, I'm gonna go there!

Hmmmmm... That sounded like another beer!

Photo © 2008 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Prediction?

Along with ambushing birds at my feeder station yesterday during the inclement weather, I was also playing in Photoshop and came up with this:

There are people on Gather.com who would gladly post such a thing. Yeah, I piss people off sometimes. Heh, heh!

© 2012 by A. Roy Hilbinger

It's the End of the World as We Know It, and I Feel Fine!

According to California radio evangelist Harold Camping, all the "true Christians" in the world will be taken up to heaven (called the "Rapture" in traditional Christian eschatology) around suppertime this evening. Of course most rational people just laugh this one off, especially as he's made this same prediction several times before. But I got to thinking; if his "true Christians" are like him and the other types who take this sort of thing seriously, then I hope it happens. Because it'll mean all the disgruntled, misanthropic sourpusses will be gone and the Earth will be left to those of us who actually know how to enjoy life. That sounds good to me! PARTY TIME!

Photo © 2009 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Theme Thursday - Brush

"Brush", eh? Well, let's see...

And now, the videos. I know it's not a brush, but the first tune I thought of was Elmore James's "Dust My Broom". Well, c'mon, you use a broom to "brush" things off, don't you? Anyhow, I'm pretty sure that both the Allman Brothers Band and Stevie Ray Vaughan did versions of this, but I couldn't find anything on YouTube. But I found something just as awesome - Irish bluesman Gary Moore doing as high energy a version of this tune as I've ever heard. Boogie time!

Of course, you use brushes to paint things, and back in 1966 the Rolling Stones used a brush to "Paint It Black". I found some good live concert footage from 2006, with Keef trying to pretend he was Brian Jones and looking like he rose from his coffin especially for this gig.

And how can I do a post on the brush theme without at least mentioning Bob Ross, with his misty mountains, staggered evergreen trees, and "happy little clouds"? I couldn't find a full episode of "Joy of Painting" on YouTube, but I found this quirky, endearing tribute to the Mop-Headed One by one Ron Barba entitled "Why I Don't Paint People". Enjoy!

Photos & text © 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger

So, What's With This Thing About Beards?

I mean, really - what's up with that? I've been being told lately that maybe the reason I haven't been able to find a job is because of my beard, and that if I shave it off somebody might actually hire me. But that just doesn't make sense, and there are several arguments against it.

The first and most persuasive argument is that I've had a beard for the last 20 years. I had it, in goatee form, when I was the director of an art gallery in the late '80s/early '90s. In 1994 I was hired to work at the Dansk Factory Outlet (where I went on to work for the full 11 years of its existence) with that goatee and was actually encouraged to grow it out to a full beard by my manager. And the beard literally got me the job at The Home Depot; Gary Thomaset, the assistant manager who hired me, swore that this gray beard of mine comforted people, that it gave me an aura of maturity and knowledge that put people at ease, these being people who were about to spend exorbitant amounts of money to have all new windows put in their homes, or a really fancy entry system with door, sidelights, and transom. And today at my interview for a floor supervisor position at the local Eastern Mountain Sports store, my interviewer told me that the beard fit right in with the outdoorsy image promoted by the company.

Another argument against the beard being a drawback is that here in New England, and especially in my area of southeastern New England, facial hair on men is pretty standard; it's part of the scenery here, accepted and part of the lifestyle. Just walking around Newport on any given day (and in Providence and Boston on those occasions when I travel up there), I'd have to say that a good 40% to 50% of the men-on-the-street have beards, goatees, muttonchops, and mustaches (and apparently handlebar mustaches are HUGE around here, especially among firemen). I don't count soul patches; those are just the result of shaving with a hangover.

Obviously the equation beard = joblessness falls apart under the evidence. I mean look at this handsome, hirsute fella below, with his air of avuncular kindness and deep wisdom. Wouldn't you hire him?

© 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Tsk, Tsk, Scott Brown

It seems that freshman US Senator Scott Brown, R-MA, has stooped to the old right-wing bad habit of sending out fundraising letters based on scaring his fan base into coughing up the moola. In this case, Cosmo Scott claims that the MA Democratic Party is trying to recruit MSNBC news anchor and commentator Rachel Maddow (who lives in MA) to run against him in 2012. The problem is, it's news to Rachel; nobody's approached her, and she wouldn't run anyhow. Here's her reaction:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Tsk, tsk, Scott Brown! Do you really think you deserve Teddy Kennedy's seat?

Theme Thursday - Breakfast

My usual breakfast - oatmeal, toasted bagel, and tea.

And now for the breakfast music! I've never heard of the band Deep Blue Something, and I never heard their song "Breakfast at Tiffany's", but when I fed "breakfast" into YouTube's search engine this was at the top of the list. I like!

Near the top of that list was another song by another artist I've never heard of, "Banana Pancakes" by Jack Johnson, and I'm liking this one a lot, too. Actually, this song has me thinking I may need to look up more stuff by Jack Johnson.

And last but certainly not least, I decided to add a little cultural uplift to the proceedings. Since coffee seems to be a major element in breakfast, I went and found J.S. Bach's paean to coffee, Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht (Be quiet, stop chattering), BWV 211, aka "The Coffee Cantata". What I've posted is movement #3, the aria Ei! Wie schmeckt der Kaffee süße (Ah! How sweet the coffee tastes). Enjoy!

Photos & text © 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Answers to Yesterday's Post

Yesterday I posted the first lines of 10 famous, or semi-famous, novels which I have in my own personal library and challenged everybody to figure out where they were from and post their answers. People have been having fun with this, but as it's been about 24 hours since I posted it, I thought it only fair to post the answers and give credit to those erudite souls who got the right ones!











1. "Hapscomb's Texaco sat on Number 93 just north of Arnette, a pissant four-street burg about 110 miles from Houston." Megan got this one right - It's the opening line from Stephen King's The Stand.

2. "In the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through the course prescribed for surgeons in the Army." Citizen K got half of this one - it is indeed by Arthur Conan Doyle. The book? The very first Sherlock Holmes story (and yes, it's a novel, not a short story), A Study in Scarlet. This is the world's introduction to John H. Watson, M.D.

3. "I'll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination." Nobody got this one. This is the first line to Ursula K. LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness, for me the second best book by this author. For me, her best book is The Dispossessed, but the first line in that book is "There was a wall." Somehow I didn't think that would be fair. Heh, heh!

4. "The Mole had been working very hard all morning spring-cleaning his little home." (I know, this one is a giveaway, but I love the book and had to include it!) Well, I did say this one was a giveaway. Stephanie, Citizen K, and Antares got this one: The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. This is one of my favorite books, and Antares was around when I did a paean to Pan based on Chapter 7, "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn".

5. "I was leaning against the bar in a speakeasy on Fifty-second Street, waiting for Nora to finish her Christmas shopping, when a girl got up from the table where she had been sitting with three other people and came over to me." Stephanie got part of this one; it is indeed The Thin Man, and it was written by the great Dashiell Hammett. I wanted to use the first line of The Maltese Falcon, but Hammett named Sam Spade and his secretary Effie Perrine in that sentence, so that was no good.

6. "The town shone in the snowy twilight like a Christmas window, with the electric railway's lights tiny and festive at the foot of the white slope, among the muffled winter hills of the Tyrol." Nobody got this one, but it's one of the 20th Century's literary classics - The Young Lions by Irwin Shaw. Not only is the book a classic, but a classic movie was made of it in 1958, starring Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Dean Martin, Hope Lange, and others. Shaw actually got to write the script, too.

7. "It was a quiet morning, the town covered over with darkness and at ease in bed." Ahhhh! Nobody got this one either, and it's another 20th Century classic - Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine. That man has the most poetic prose style of any contemporary writer I know of!

8. "It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills." Another one nobody got. This is one of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors: The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. Huh! Chandler and Hammett, eh? Well, I did warn you I was a freak for noir!

9. "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show." I'm surprised nobody got this one, although Sophie said she guessed this one but forgot to report her answer. A definite classic: David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. This is the second most famous opening line by Dickens, the most famous being the opening line of A Tale of Two Cities; I opted out of that one as just a little too easy!

10. "The full truth of this odd matter is what the world has long been looking for, and public curiosity is sure to welcome." This one's another classic, although it's not this author's most famous book. This is the opening line of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Master of Ballantrae; while not as famous as Treasure Island, it's still treasured as a classic. I didn't use the opening line of Treasure Island because it names Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey, and Treasure Island all in the same breath. Not much of a challenge there!.

So those are the answers. In closing, I just want to throw this one at you that I didn't think of until yesterday's quiz was well under way. But this is another classic; see if you can't figure it out.

"On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays it was Court Hand and Summulae Logicales, while the rest of the week it was the Organon, Repetition and Astrology."

Have fun!

Photo © 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Ten Famous (Sort Of) First Lines

My friend Stephanie (Rocket Scientist, Ask Me Anything, Rockets and Dragons) has this great thing going on all three of her blogs; it's not exactly a meme because you're not required to pick more people to take it, but it is something of a quiz, in this case testing your knowledge of literature. She had ten first lines per quiz, and three quizzes, one per blog - classics, science fiction classics, and her personal favorites.

Bookaholic that I am, I loved it, and even managed to get at least one right on each quiz. So I decided to do one of my own, based on books in my own personal library. Be prepared; yes, there are classics in my collection, but I'm also a major fan of mysteries, science fiction, and noir. So some of these may be familiar, but others you may have to dig deep for. In any case, check these out and give me your answers in the comment thread.


1. "Hapscomb's Texaco sat on Number 93 just north of Arnette, a pissant four-street burg about 110 miles from Houston."

2. "In the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through the course prescribed for surgeons in the Army."

3. "I'll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination."

4. "The Mole had been working very hard all morning spring-cleaning his little home." (I know, this one is a giveaway, but I love the book and had to include it!)

5. "I was leaning against the bar in a speakeasy on Fifty-second Street, waiting for Nora to finish her Christmas shopping, when a girl got up from the table where she had been sitting with three other people and came over to me."

6. "The town shone in the snowy twilight like a Christmas window, with the electric railway's lights tiny and festive at the foot of the white slope, among the muffled winter hills of the Tyrol."

7. "It was a quiet morning, the town covered over with darkness and at ease in bed."

8. "It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills."

9. "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show."

10. "The full truth of this odd matter is what the world has long been looking for, and public curiosity is sure to welcome."

Okay, have at it!

Photo © 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Theme Thursday - Hat

Well, you could probably guess this was coming, given the theme. So here are some portraits of hats in my collection.

For videos this week, I entered "hat" into YouTube's search engine, and right at the top of the list was this gem by Joe Cocker, "You Can Leave Your Hat On". Heh, heh! That oughta give a kick-start to your day!

Not too much farther down the list was a song by an artist I hadn't heard of before - Ingrid Michaelson. The song is "The Hat", which is obviously a fan favorite. I like, too, and this is somebody I'm gonna need to check out in more depth. In any case, here she is live at Easy Street Records in Seattle. Enjoy!

Photos & text © 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Party!

So did y'all miss me while I was away this past weekend? In case you didn't read the note in last week's Theme Thursday post, I went down to Pennsylvania for my Mom's 80^th birthday party. Her birthday was actually January 4, but this was the closest Saturday we could get the rent of the room.

Mom lives in a retirement community in Chambersburg, PA, and the party was held in the meeting room of the Community Center. Aside from family members, a lot of her friends in the community came. Unfortunately, two people who wanted to be there couldn't make it because further south in Maryland it was snowing to beat the band (around 12 inches!); so the two Scotts, my brother-in-law and he and my sister's youngest son, were stuck at home because of the storm.

But despite the weather, the party went off well, and your roving photographer captured the event. I have to apologize up front: please excuse the graininess of the shots. I was bound and determined not to annoy people (and give away candid shots) with flash, so I ended up having to shoot at 800 ISO in order to get the light right without having to use a tripod. Next time I won't be such an anti-flash snob!









So here's the Birthday Girl with her royal sash talking to a friend. Now I ask you: does that look like an 80-year-old woman to you? Nope, not to me, either.
















This is my sister Sue in a typical pose - texting away. In this case it was legitimate, though; she was texting family members to find out how bad the snow was where they were and if they thought they'd still make it, or was it smarter to stay home (or turn around and go back in some cases). Mom looks on anxiously.

















My brother Don and sister-in-law Teri greeting guests in the hall outside the party room. They basically organized this shindig; they only live just up the road in Shippensburg.









This was the star of the day: the chocolate fountain. Various non-traditional - and possibly illegal - methods were discussed as to how to get the most chocolate out of it; applying the mouth to the top of the fountain and sucking was one approach, as was using a large straw. One attempt was seriously discussed: just sticking a coffee cup in there and filling up.

A shot of one part of the crowd. This was still early on in the event; those four empty seats in the front were eventually filled.

My sister's oldest son Kevin. Charm is his middle name.

Sue and Mom cutting the cake. See all the chocolate goodies on that table? Are you sensing a theme to this party? (Willow, please stop drooling on the computer screen!)










I call this shot "The Cousins (and one Boyfriend)". From right to left: Kevin, my sister's eldest who you've met above; Kyle, my brother's son; Brittany, my brother's daughter; and Britt's boyfriend, whose name just now floated right out of my brain (maybe it'll float back in later). The older woman in the green sweater in the foreground is one of the retirement community residents. They're all working on the trivia quiz Don put together (more about that below).

Sue brings out the kitchen staff and gets them a round of applause for the job they've done with the spread.

Don playing MC on the trivia quiz. He put together a series of trivia questions about people and events from 1930 (the year of Mom's birth) and made copies that were piled up on each table, and at the beginning of the party he encouraged everybody to fill them out so that at the end of the party he'd read out the answers and a winner would be determined. As Don put it: "There are no prizes, just bragging rights."









The last shot from the party - the die-hards who just wouldn't leave. All family, of course. From the left: Mom; Tim, Mom's youngest brother, who's only 3 years older than I am; Teri; Pat, Tim's wife (the three of us went to college together); and Don.

After that the party broke up. It was snowing there in Chambersburg, and Tim and Pat and Kevin were all anxious to get home (a) before it started snowing in earnest there in C-burg, and (b) before it got any worse back home. So fond farewells were said (and promises to call/text when they got home to let us know they got there safely) and everybody went their own separate ways.

But before I go, I just have to share with you this family portrait circa 1958. My grandmother took this in their old rowhouse in east Baltimore. Left to right: Don; Mom with Sue in her lap; and Dad with me in his lap. Every time I look at this I marvel at how young my parents were in this shot; being their kid, you just never think of them as ever being young, but here's the proof. And this is one of many shots of me as a kid that makes me swear Bill Watterson (who created the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip) must have lived in my neighborhood. There's no way that gap-toothed kid with the cheesy smile and the overactive imagination wasn't the model for Calvin!

And one bonus shot I couldn't resist from the trip home on the train today - the Manhattan skyline, one of my all-time favorite views. I know many of you may be shocked by that, given my Nature Boy reputation and all the shots of birds and woods and salt marshes. But there's something about a skyscraper-filled city skyline that makes my heart go pitter-patter. Go figure!

© 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Theme Thursday - Impression... Oh Yeah, and Felt

This theme was doing nothing for me, and I was planning to sit it out this week. But late last night something occurred to me; I grabbed the camera and decided to do my famous [sic] impressions. I promise I'll never do this to you again!

"I am not a crook!" Richard "Tricky Dick" Nixon

"Bully!" Teddy Roosevelt, inspired by my American History professor in college, who loved to do Teddy impressions.

Ebenezer Scrooge, counting his money.

Oh yeah... This is a piece of felt, just to cover the other theme.

After all that, you probably already know what video is coming. Yup, Rich Little, the King od the impressionists. Enjoy!

Photos & text © 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Theme Thursday - Polka Dot

Well, I don't have any photos of things polka-dotted, and I did a whole post on Polka - the music and the dance - not too very long ago, I was kinda stuck, especially since I don't post any photos but my own (well, except for the public domain shot of the Hedgehog for Groundhog Day). But I had me an idea, so I opened Photoshop and played around, and this was the result:

Meanwhile, I found some interesting videos to go with this. NOT the "Yellow Polka-dot Bikini" song; and decided to be merciful and spare you that earworm. I did find some nice videos of Jimmy Van Heusen's and Johnny Burke's "Polka Dots and Moonbeams", though. Not the Sarah Vaughn version, drat the luck! But here's a nice version with Johnny Desmond singing with the Ray McKinley GM Orchestra:

And purely for giggles, I found this great 1948 Tom & Jerry cartoon, "Polka-Dot Puss". Enjoy!

Graphic & text © 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger
PS - Sorry I was so late getting this posted; the Verizon Broadband service in my area code was down until a little after noon. And there I was all ready to upload everything at 8 this morning!

On Being a Pedestrian in Newport

It's not easy being a pedestrian in Newport, RI. Part of the problem is that we're a tourist resort, and visitors from elsewhere seem to have that typical tourist attitude that local traffic laws don't apply to them because they're not from here (even if the same law applies in their home states). But that's not the only problem, and there are many ways a person walking around this town can end up being a target. I want to cover three particular issues in this essay.

The first issue is the thing with crosswalks, and that is a tourist issue. It seems that people visiting from outside Rhode Island think that because they're driving a vehicle that outweighs the human body they have the unquestioned right-of-way, despite the prevalence of signs like the one pictured to the left. The chief offenders seem to be Massachusetts drivers; drivers from other "foreign" states also violate the "stop at the crosswalk" law, but not as universally as Massachusetts drivers. In fact, Massachusetts drivers tend to ignore a wide range of Rhode Island traffic laws with impunity and are seen to be such a nuisance on our roads that they're known as "Massholes" from Little Compton to Chepachet and Westerly to Woonsocket. [Note: If there are any Massachusetts residents reading this who are offended, don't take it up with me; have a talk with your fellow citizens who seem to think they have a right to come down here to RI to act like idiots on the road.]

But as far as crosswalks go, out-of-state drivers (MA drivers especially) seem to think they're just meaningless painted decorations on the road, and any pedestrians walking on them are art lovers who have gotten carried away with their admiration and are in the way of people with places to go and things to see. They lean out their windows and yell, they lean on their horns, they flip you the bird... I even had a guy (wouldn't you know it, MA plates on the car!) swerve around me, beeping and screaming at me to get out of the road, in the crosswalk in front of the police station on Broadway. I got the satisfaction of watching him get busted on that one!

Another issue is roadside puddles and the urge in people with IQs less than 75 (how did they get a driver's license in the first place?) to drive through them to douse any hapless bystanders. This isn't a tourist issue, this is purely a local one. If you're ever in Newport and are walking near any low-lying areas where rain or snow-melt settle to create miniature lakes, keep an eye out for old, sagging cars or pick-ups full of kids who look like candidates for Jerry Springer's studio audience, because if you see one of those you're about to get soaked. And it's not an unavoidable accident; you can see them swerve out of their current path to deliberately hit the puddle, and you can hear the hilarity in the car as they pass you by. And believe me, if they get busted (and yes, it's a fineable offense; it's called "operating a vehicle in a reckless manner") they always try to claim it was an accident and they didn't know there was a small inland sea there. Yeah, right!

But by far the clearest danger to pedestrians comes in Winter. It's a sad fact that large segments of the population of Newport don't clear the sidewalk in front of their homes after a snow. It's not universal throughout town; the main commercial drags are easy to walk through afterwards, as are some of the older ethnic neighborhoods (the Irish, Portuguese, and Italian enclaves in town). But surprise, surprise! It's the ritzier neighborhoods of the moneyed WASPs and the yuppie enclaves in town who never, ever shovel or use a snow-blower. In the WASP neighborhoods they plow out their driveways so their cars can get out, but the sidewalk remains covered. And in town in the yuppie enclaves you can see the path cleared from the front door to their SUV, but the rest of the sidewalk remains untouched. It's as if their money exempts them from civic responsibility.

The one that really cracks me up is a house on the corner of two main drags in one of the WASPier neighborhoods. The black Lexus SUV that's parked in the driveway had a McCain/Palin bumper sticker during the last election, and its predecessor (a Saab stationwagon) had Bush/Cheney bumper stickers in the two previous elections. And the sidewalk in front of their house is never cleared of snow; they just clear the driveway. There have been times when I've wanted to knock on the door and ask if membership in the Republican Party engenders a laissez faire attitude toward civic responsibilty, or if it's the pre-existing attitude that leads to membership in the party.

In any event, walking around Newport in the aftermath of a snowfall can be a tricky proposition; you spend as much time walking out in the street because the sidewalk's impassable as you do walking off the street on a cleared sidewalk. And when the road is a busy one and slippery on its own account, that uncleared sidewalk enters the realm of being a public safety issue. In fact, there is a municipal ordinance that states that the sidewalk in front of your house needs to be cleared and passable within 48 hours of the end of the snowfall, and failure to comply results in a fine. I really wish the city would start to enforce that one; given the amount of uncleared walks I encountered after this last storm, the city could collect enough money to lower the property tax rate!

So there you have it, the perils of being a pedestrian in Newport, RI. Pass at your own risk!

© 2009 by A. Roy Hilbinger

13 - It Comes After 12

Ayuh! Good ol' paraskevidekatriaphobia (fear of Friday the 13th for you laypeople). I never understood it, myself; I've never had anything happen to me on that day, and in fact some very good things have happened in my life on those particular Fridays. But apparently the tradition of fearing Friday the 13th goes back a good ways; Friday's bad reputation goes back to the 14th century, and 13's bad rep goes back to a very old superstition based on the incident of the Last Supper: there were 13 at the table (Judas included) at that last Passover Seder with Jesus and his disciples, and look how that ended up! So I guess the two teamed up are supposed to combine to create some really bad mojo.




One of my favorite lines from a movie: In Apollo 13 Tom Hanks' Jim Lovell comes home early to tell the wife and kids that his team has been moved up to the Apollo 13 mission due to illness on the original crew. Marilyn Lovell, played by Kathleen Quinlan, has some problems with the number of the mission.

Marilyn Lovell: Naturally, it's 13. Why 13?
Jim Lovell: It comes after 12, hon.

Heh, heh! Good old scientific, level-headed thinking wins the day! Except, of course, something went very wrong indeed on that mission, and NASA has never numbered another mission 13 since.

Nah! I still don't buy it! But that doesn't mean we can't have some fun. When it comes to superstition, thanks to Stevie Wonder we can get funky widdit! How 'bout some live "Superstition"? Yeah!

Happy Friday the 13th!

Black cat photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, with some Photoshop fiddlin' from me.

Shall We Dance?

So... Willow has been busy the last few weeks handing out invitations to all and sundry to the Second Annual Willow Manor Ball, and she spent the last week getting Willow Manor ready for the onslaught. Naturally, seeing who else was coming and realizing that this was the social event of the year here on Blogger, I just had to come. Finding a date was going to be a problem, though, as it seems that all the available women seemed to be being scooped up by the other male bloggers. I had to get creative.

I asked Gomez Addams if he could spare Morticia for a day, but he threatened to challenge me to a duel, and my swordsmanship is a little rusty. Frankenstein's monster wasn't going to rent out his bride, either. And Vlad's three captive females don't even look at anybody but Vlad these days, so no luck there, either. So I thumbed hastily through my little black book. Gee, how did so many women get married to someone else after I dated them? But wait, all is not lost. Here's one nobody in his right mind would marry. I was in luck! I called her, and she accepted without hesitation. After all, nobody who's anybody is going to miss Willow's ball! So Here I am on my way to the ball with - Cruella de Vil. That's her below on the left. And that's me on the right; I saw a potential client I've been working on for a couple of weeks, and decided this party was a good time , since he seemed to be all loose and suggestible, to sign over his soul once and for all. The picture's not in the best focus because Cruella was whacking me with her purse for leaving her to work on my night off.

We motored to the ball in my 1929 canary yellow Auburn Boat-tailed Roadster.

When we got there it was pretty obvious that the party was in full swing. Man, that joint was jumpin'!

Everybody was dancing up a storm, and then the Silver Fox and Catherine Zeta-Jones cleared the floor for their number. When they were done, Cruella and I decided it was time for us to put on a little show as well. Halfway through the rest of the crowd got into the spirit of the thing and joined in. What a scene that was!

I certainly hope everyone else has as wonderful a time as Cruella and I had. Thanks, Willow!