BLATHER REVIEW

Good Riddance, July

Okay, so I haven't posted much at all in the past month. Thing is, about two weeks ago, I decided to do a "year-ago-today" post, but discovered that all of my July's are filled with "sorry-for-not-posting" posts.

So, as it turns out, July is my yearly navel gazing month. It must be the heat combined with the lack of breeze going through my room. (I can hardly read blogs for 20 minutes before drifting off into exhausted lethargy.)

The good news is that now I have a window fan. The bad news is that half the electrical outlets in this house run through a single circuit and it trips about three times a day. So, I try not to run the fan when the heat/humidity is tolerable.

It seems, fortunately, that I get a bit more blog-active (blactive?) come August, so we'll see what's in store in the coming month.

My landlady just bitched at me about why the lawn isn't mowed to a smooth sheen and why there are weeds among the hedges. I dunno, Housemate Chris was always the gardener. I can't tell a weed from a pretty green thing that gives off oxygen. But I guess I'll mow the lawn tomorrow if it'll shut her up.

Incidentally, I love the smell of fresh cut grass, but I also love the look overly long grass before it's cut. My neighbor (a retired old sumbitch) mows his lawn once a week. Not only does he usually start at 6:45 in the morning, due to his advanced age and lack of youthful vigor it takes him about four hours to complete the job. (Thankfully his veggie garden takes up nearly half of his yard.) Personally, I'd love to have ivy or weeds or whatever climbing the walls of our houses. Maybe it's just me, but I'd like a private little forrest.

Happy trails.

UPDATE: My spidey senses tell me that Chris is now out mowing the backyard. The deal I proposed to Landlady was that I would mow the grass if Chris would pull the weeds. (I can barely tell a weed from a snapdragon.) Now Chris is gonna hafta do all of it. Mwuh huh huh huh huh!!!!

UPDATE 2: Correction: Turns out that Landlady is mowing around her small garden. I guess she doesn't want me to shred her cucumber plants while I give the lawn a crew cut. @#$% neat freaks. She's got only about five minutes of daylight left, btw...

Pink Floyd, circa 1967

BET YA CAN'T SPOT THE CRAZY ONE!

Tip o'the tam to Liza's comment at Emily's post.

Weird Dream #2,471

[I have a lot of weird dreams, but I never write about them because I think they're usually uninteresting to anyone but me. But, I think last night was the first time I'd ever had a dream that included bloggers, so here 'tis.]

I climbed up a stairwell and entered a large room. With the doorway to my right and a yellow brick wall behind me, I surveyed the room. Along the left wall was a sofa on which my younger sister sat lotus-style and picking at her fingernails. There was a desk in the far left corner with a lamp and some books on it. I didn't notice what was along the right wall yet when a dark-haired woman entered through the same doorway that I'd just passed through.

"Annika died," she sadly whispered in my ear. Pointing to the far right of the room she said, "She's over there with Victor."

There was a nook at the far right. Along the right wall was a love seat on which Jenelle sat with her legs curled under her. Perpendicular to that -- and with the back against the near wall of the nook -- was another love seat on which sat Victor, cradling Annika in his lap.

"I just heard," I said as sat down next to Jenelle. I never saw Victor's face, but he was sitting with his right leg crossed on his left knee with what looked to be a 6 or 7-year-old Annika. "What happened?" I asked Victor as I rested my left elbow in his right knee and put my chin on my left fist.

"Terrorism," he said quietly.

After staring at little Annika for a few moments I stood up and walked to the spot where I first surveyed the room. I looked in the doorway and there stood Annika -- now about 14-years-old -- leaning against the door frame. I extended my hand and she walked toward me.

"Let me take your picture," said the unknown dark-haired woman pointing a camera at us as she arose from the desk's chair. I moved Annika in front of me and wrapped my arms around her, holding her shoulders in my hands.

"Okay," I said, "I'd like to have one picture of me and Annika together." The camera flashed but it wasn't a good one. "That was a weak flash," I said as dark-haired camerawoman cranked the film along to try again.

"I don't know what's wrong with this thing," she said as she removed the lens and then twisted it back into place again. "Should we try later?"

Then Annika walked to my right and scanned the yellow brick wall as if looking for something. "I don't know what's wrong with this thing," she muttered.

Jenelle then entered the room through the doorway and as she passed Annika said very matter-of-factly, "Annika, don't follow that wall, follow me." Jenelle then walked back to the love seat that she was sitting on earlier. Just as she spun around and plopped down onto the seat the wall in front of Annika exploded.

As dust cleared I looked to my right and there were bricks on the floor and a large hole in the wall, but no Annika. I took a few steps toward the nook and saw that Victor had the 6 or 7-year-old Annika cradled in his lap again (or still). Again, I never saw Victor's face. For some reason the dark-haired woman wanted to hand me the camera. "This is yours," she said as she poked my left shoulder with it.

I took the camera, raised it to my face and pointed it at Victor and Annika. Little Annika took up most of the view, so I zoomed out to include Victor in the shot. Victor looked up and I saw that his face was a blaze of white light.

Then the dream ended, I guess. I don't remember what happened after that.

Bass Ackward Recordings

So, you know how you play a part of some song backwards and it kinda sorta sounds like something else? Y'know, like when you play the gibberish at the end of the Beatles "I'm So Tired" it sounds like John might be saying "Paul is a dead man. Miss him, miss him, miss him...".

Well, here's a site that has a few of those silly moments. Some of these I knew about, but most of them are new to me.

Perhaps the creepiest one for me is when you play Yoko Ono's spoken intro to "Kiss Kiss Kiss" backwards. She is actually saying "anata, daiteyo", which is Japanese for "darling, hug me". But when you play it backwards it sounds alot like "I shot John Lennon". Heh.

So, just who is Alan Schlesinger anyway?

Stephen Macklin gets some answers from Connecticut Republican senatorial candidate Alan Schlesinger (if that is his real name).

Part deux is promised so stay tuned.

YYYYYYYYES!!!

So I was sitting here in my sweltering, breeze-less 90+ degree room sweating half-a-cup of ice water every 20 minutes and fanning myself for dear life, hoping against hope that something will change.

It is now 8:00pm and the wind is not sending me a breeze, but a frickin' gale force, spray-soaked wind! The thunder began off in the distance and, in the past five minutes, has come nearly directly overhead.

Thunder! Rain! Wind! Cooooool!!!

I may even turn the oven on and prepare a hot meal. :)

Cruel Summer

90 degrees. Humid. No breeze. No AC. Not even a fan for the window. I can't make ice fast enough for this water I've been drinking. Can't blog like this.

Okay, I'll try.

So, here I sit dressed in only my bathing trunks and fanning my self with an envelope fron the Jury Administrator. It's an old envelope -- about 6 months old. I keep it around because I have notes, phone numbers and various login and password info written all over it.

Everything I have to eat needs cooking. Frozen fish; frozen pizza. Mainly soups, though. So I got the idea to hardboil my eggs so's I could eat them cold. Then I got the bright idea to turn them into deviled eggs. My deviled eggs usually come out pretty awesome, but this time I went a bit too heavy on the horseradish. Now, I like horseradish in my eggs, mind you, but this batch was too strong even for me. Grrrr. Oh, I'll eat 'em and like it.

How much does a window box fan cost? I wont be able to find out 'til probably Wednesday when a check comes. I don't even have the gas to get across town and no money for even a pack of cigarettes. Luckily I don't have any job interviews scheduled for next two days. :)

Hope y'all are staying cool. Let's hope for no big blackouts this year.

Need more iced water...

Woman Finds More Than 20 Snakes In Her Car

ASTORIA, Ore. (AP) - It was either a prank or the work of Mother Nature - either way, Sherry Hart got a slithery surprise in her car.

Sherry Hart found a pair of garter snakes in the back seat of her car on a recent shopping trip to the grocery store, then found more under a floor mat.

"This lady was freaking out next to her car," says Will Brinkerhoff, 17, an employee at the North Coast Fred Meyer.

Eventually more than 20 of the harmless snakes were found inside the car, some pencil-thin and one the diameter of a quarter and 3 feet long.

[.....]

When Warrenton police Officer Jim Gaebel arrived he guessed that one snake must have gotten into the car and had babies. Gaebel later told Hart that in all his years in police work, this was his first snake call.

But Hart believes it was a prank.

"Who did it? We don't know," she said. But she believes her car was chosen because a window stuck in the open position made it an easy target in the big parking lot.

I got nothin'.

Mice On A Plane

If you fly on airplanes maybe you'd be interested in this story. An American Airlines plane was found to be infested with some critters.

The whistle blower said, "We had to take the chairs off and that's when everybody saw mice running around on the floor and one ran down one of the mechanic's arm."

[....]
The whistleblower explained, "There's feces all along this edge right here. It's throughout the whole aircraft."

The whistle blower said workers found nests in air vents and dead mice in emergency oxygen masks. When mice would get hungry, they ate insulation and chewed through wires.

"If they shorted themselves and caused a fire, it would go through that cabin so fast, we could have lost some lives," said the whistleblower.

There may have been up to 1,000 mice on board. A dead one was found in an emergency oxygen mask. Apparantly, there were several complaints about the infestation and AA did nothing about it.

_{Filed under: WTF?}

And so, he's dead

It was about the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis that he first began to secure the alliances and associations that he would need to become a major player on the world stage where crowds would cheer him and his unique talent of putting inspiring words together.

But, just when it seemed like he was on the brink of becoming an international hero, of sorts, madness was clearly claiming his ability to live out his lofty ambitions. All of that smoking was clouding his judgement more and more and he found himself alone; an island of desolation in a sea of rising prosperity.

While he has been largely isolated from the world stage, his influence was felt in the works and accolades of others who found inspiration in his style, words and his ability to survive in the face of great adversity.

So, I'd like to raise a glass and say....

Adios, Syd Barrett.

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So,
so you think you tell Heaven from Hell?
Blue skies from pain?
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?

Did they get you trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
Did you exchange a walk-on part in a war for a lead role in cage?

How I wish... How I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl year after year
running over the same old ground.
What have we found? The same old fear.

Wish you were here.

--- Roger Waters & David Gilmore, for Syd, 1975

...and the madcap laughs...
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WHOOPS

I thought Juno was gonna bill me on the 6th, so I never got around to updating my billing information. My payment couldn't go through and Juno disconnected me and wouldn't let me add a new checking account number, only a credit card number. Um... I ain't got no credit cards no more.

Turns out last months payment also never went through. So I emailed Juno and said "yo, wussup?!". They turned my account back on today and allowed me to add a bank account number. Yay!

So, I'm back. Maybe I'll even post something. After I eat something.

You wont believe this

A couple of weeks ago I left a comment at this post at Right Wing Nation. Here is my comment and the comments that followed:

All well and good and normal, right? Notice the last comment by "Suse". It's spam, obviously.

I just received an e-mail notification that a new comment has been posted to my blog, Right Wing Nation. Huh?

My immediate thought was that something was amiss in Munuvia. But...um... Right Wing Nation is not a MuNu blog. Why was I sent RWN's comment notification? WTF?!!!