Insulate! Be Prepared

Pop a Benny

I'll admit it. I was introduced to Jack Benny by Warner Brothers. I don't know very much about him, but I love him anyways. A few days ago my mom and I were talking about odd questions that pop into our heads that scream to be answered. I was wondering if Lloyd Bridges was still alive and she wanted to know if Jack Benny was gay. I think her main reason for thinking this was because of his sort of feminine habit of putting his hand to his face. As far as I can tell, mom, Jack Benny is not gay. He was married to Mary Livingstone, a distant cousin to the Marx Brothers, who collaborated with him throughout his career. According to Wikipedia, "Mr. Benny's will arranged for flowers, specifically a single long-stemmed red rose, to be delivered to his widowed wife, Mary Livingstone, every day for the rest of her life. Livingstone died nine years later on June 30, 1983." It sounds like he was deeply in love with Mary.
Enjoy this cartoon that introduced me to dear Jack Benny.




Lloyd Bridges (1913-1998) :(

Pearl or Patience

On July 8, 1913 Pearl Curran channeled a Patience Worth from a Ouija board.



Together they wrote 6 novels and several short stories and poems.

This entry from Wikipedia piques my curiosity for today:

"Pearl Curran was probably a highly gifted child whose talent for writing was smothered by her mother, who wanted to force Pearl into a singing career. In the alter ego of Patience Worth her subconscious could revive that talent. Patience also had a sharp tongue and was highly suspicious and critical of organized religion and formal education. She also was contemptuous of the various forms of academic and religious posturing. [This is argued] that these were in fact personality traits of Pearl that she couldn't let out at that time."

strange tulips made this planet glow

Adapted lyrics from Strange Angels "Shake" by Kristin Hersh

Oh, Maude!

I'm sorry you had to go. I'll miss you, Bea Arthur.

(1922-2009)

Happy Earth Day

My friend just passed the first half of the ASBOG. Now she's a geolgist in-training! Most of her work is in Environmental. It's not the idealistic type of environmental that most of us are fond of (including me). It's a practical, scientific occupation charged to probe and test our air, soil, water, etc. Our outdoor surroundings. She has encounters with pollution from our past. She doesn't clean it up, but she finds it--like a toxic waste detective. She has direct contact with the environment in its most sorry existence.
This is what I want to do: I want to care for the earth. I want to be an earth nurse.

Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer!

"One hundred thousand years ago, a caveman was out hunting on the frozen wastes when he slipped and fell into a crevasse. In 1988, he was discovered by some scientists and thawed out. He then went to law school and became.. Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer."

Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer @ Yahoo! Video

designer specimen

for Danielle Marit

I always liked the saxophone's jungle stylings in this song--so did she.

duckbill stigma

Me and My Hatter

Forward

Center your force

On your hands

I felt like trash

Now that I've convinced myself

that I'm a child of the harshities of the world

You don't matter

Just me and my hatter

swivel hips, clitter-clatter

How many of your

thoughts just baby batter?

I'm stepping off your 

corporate ladder

Just me and my hatter

No more chitter-chatter

that I'm a child of the harshities of the world

I won't smash

I want my life back

On your feet

Center your force

Onward

Eostre Eggs

Come Saturday Morning

The Sterile Cuckoo Haunts Me

Mon petite shu shu

Mon amour, je suis folle pour toi.
Come, let's dance the dance of lovers.

Look at the body of the Giant Swallowtail.
Doesn't it look kind of human?
I can see how the ancients believed in fairies.

liquid tulip

The Stranger

I can't believe this album affected me so much. I was only one when it came out, but this album cover and its title song left me with a fear that will live on forever.

Looking back on Billy Joel, one would not equate the feeling of fear with this man nor his music. Maybe melancholy and sentimentality, but not fear. With that said, the album, The Stranger, is one that I would liken to Billy's dark period. Even as I am older, the spookiness is obvious. First, the cover of the album is not something a young child should ever see. It shows Billy on a unkept bed looking down on a disembodied, sort of realistic mask of the female persuation on a pillow. I think this vision was the catalyst for my nightmare fantasy. Mr. Joel trumps that phantom image with the most haunting audio born, from the title song, The Stranger.

This necromancer begins with whistling. Not cheerful whistling, which is mostly the case in the world of whistling, but a lonely whistle that seems to come out of the dark and echo off jagged buildings of a misty alley where perhaps Jack the Ripper is lurking. The whistling was all I needed to hear before I would go into hysterics.

I remember sitting in a late 1970s apartment of one of my mom's friends. I can vaguely visualize a gold metal and glass shelf and the lights were kind of yellow (there's a Steeley Dan aura here). I somehow recall hearing the frightful whistling of The Stranger and then everything fades to black. I know I cried. I think my mom had to come get me or made her friend change the song...I'm not sure if my Stranger song fear was known at that time.

Now it may seem that I never got past the whistling part of Billy Joel's ominous opus and I have to admit, I didn't get past it for awhile, but other parts of The Stranger are unsettling as well. After the eerie whistling, hell bound demon guitars burst into a wail that could accompany the spidery dance of dainty limbed devils with pointy hooves. And if that isn't enough, Billy, in his new york state of mind and accent, sings about "Tha Strang-yah" with a wicked tone. There is a part in this song (the bridge?) where he goes all light and high, but I didn't let it fool me, I knew that in the end the stranger would be there to kick me right between the eyes.

I wish I could say that as I got a little older, things evened out a bit and I was able to get over the evil lurking behind this album, but that's not how this story goes. I had been potty trained for a few years, but my grandmother was complaining to my mom that I kept wetting myself instead of using the bathroom. She told my mom that when she asked me why I wasn't using the bathroom all I would say is that The Stranger was in there. At the time, my mom had no clue as to what I was talking about. Finally it occured to them to ask me who The Stranger was. My grandmother had a vase in her bathroom that was a ceramic lady's head adorned with a hat and a hole in the top of her head for fake flowers (my grandma was a kid in the depression--buy something that lasts). The scariest thing about the lady head vase was that her eyes were closed. You never knew when she might open them. In the shadows of my occult memory I remember staring at the faux painted talisman waiting for her to open her eyes wide as if to say, "Aha! I caught you!" My most demented thought was that she was whispering (no, not whistling) through those hardened lips. All while maintaining her sleeping frozen facade in an attempt to lull me into a false sense of security.

Upon the knowledge of my horror, my sweet Grams promptly took The Stranger lady vase out of the bathroom and I was free to use the bathroom without having the bejesus scared out of me. Years later, I was in her downstairs pantry my grandfather made for her and behind some canned sweet pickles was The Stranger lady vase and her mysterious eyelids. It startled me for a second and I laughed it off, but I was still a little creeped out that she was still in the house.

Third prize is

YOU'RE FIRED!

Best Monologue Ever!

friday pattern design

scrying patterns

April Fools Vision

April's Fools
they parade in
wearing white and pink tunics
and yellow and violet
cone party hats
knees zig zag marching
elbows right angle pumping
charging behind
a ridiculous man
in a white straw top hat
with a band of blue and red
squiggled together
brass staff striking the air
body drums resonating
from fluffy pink mallets
schist-like pavement
rounded to the earth
flanked by chunky maze barked trees
and undulating green vegetation
embracing the whole scene.