It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much you love them.
~Agatha Christie
May 02
April 2015 – Quote of the Month
Apr 27
Princess with Medium Skin Tone
I often use Apple’s iPhone Siri to read texts to me. When receiving an emoticon, she describes it. And so I was greatly amused when I received a text with an Apple princess emoji and Siri described her as, “Princess with Medium Skin Tone“.
I think that should be the title for the next Disney princess movie.
Apr 04
March 2015 – Quote of the Month
No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.
~ Hal Borland
Mar 30
Smithfield Street Bridge on a Foggy March Morning
Smithfield Street Bridge on a Foggy March Morning – iPhone photo by Glen Green
(Click photo for a larger view)
Sharing a quick iPhone photo from a beautiful, foggy March Morning as the sun rose behind Smithfield Street bridge. – No crop, no filters and unprocessed.
Mar 02
February 2015 – Quote of the Month
Of winter’s lifeless world each tree
Now seems a perfect part;
Yet each one holds summer’s secret
Deep down within its heart.~ Charles G. Slater
Feb 21
January 2015 – Quote of the Month
Man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it.
~ John Steinbeck,
Sweet Thursday
Jan 24
Too Bad Boko Haram Didn’t Deflate a Football
A ridiculous amount of national news cycles has been spent on America’s favorite tax dodgers – the NFL and their latest sports cheating scandal, “Deflate-Gate“. – I’ve watched the story either lead, or take second on the TV news all week.
As if there weren’t already entire series of channels devoted to covering sports, such petty concerns dislodge any number of real-world problems. Take the Boko Haram as a single example. The moment that these barbarians would touch one blonde hair of a white American girl, then we’d have a new war to go to. – But until then, we can hardly concern ourselves.
Protesters march against the killing of over 47 students of Potiskum Government Comprehensive School in Yobe State, Nigeria, Nov. 17, 2014.
Jan 24
December 2014 – Quote of the Month
For disappearing acts, it’s hard to beat what happens to the eight hours supposedly left after eight of sleep and eight of work.
~Doug Larson
Jan 12
November 2014 – Quote of the Month
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone.
It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.
It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.
It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.
We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.
We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people…
This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
~Dwight Eisenhower
Dec 30
The Nightmare Before Christmas
Whereas others have decorated their house for the winter holidays – namely, christmas, we’ve kept the arachnid Halloween decorations up in our entryway – Cirith Ungol (Sindarin for Spider’s Cleft, or Pass of the Spider).
All Photos by Yours Truly – Glen Green. Click on images to see larger versions.
In a ravine she lived, and took shape as a spider of monstrous form, weaving her black webs in a cleft of the mountains. There she sucked up all light that she could find, and spun it forth again in dark nets of strangling gloom, until no light more could come to her abode; and she was famished.
– J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion, Of the Darkening of Valinor)
Shelob
Glow in the dark spiders in the windows
Spider feeds on a painted Dollar Store Hand
Skeleton Hand caught in the Web
Silhouette of Spider back-lit against Halloween Lights
Cocoon Corpse Covered in Newly Hatched Spiderlings
Spider Infested Skull Hanging Inverted from the Ceiling
Spider with Glowing Eyes and Baby Glow in the Dark Spiderling
Cocoon Corpse
Cirith Ungol – The Spiders Pass in the Daytime
Shadow Casting Webs
Giant Spider, Prepared to Drop Down on Unsuspecting Halloween Guests
A Hall of Spiders and Their Victims
Cocooned Corpses Strung from the Ceiling
Dark Shapes, with Many Legs and Webbed Corpses
One of the pleasures of adulthood – you can pretty much do whatever makes you happy insider your own home. For me, that means a hallway of giant spiders will continue haunting and hanging all winter long, because, why the hell not?
Nov 29
Halloween Hands
According to the calendar, Halloween is over, but it lingers in my heart. – I had quite a lot of fun decorating this year. The following iPhone photo is an example of one Halloween project where I took cheap, boring, Dollar Store hands and gave them various treatments to jazz them up. Procedures included painting, stains, melting plastic and gluing on plastic insects. (Also acquired at the Dollar Store.)
The top hand shows the basic, untreated $1 dismembered hand acquired from the Dollar Store.
$1 dismembered hands from Dollar Store – jazzed up
Nov 17
October 2014 – Quote of the Month
There is a child in every one of us who is still a trick-or-treater looking for a brightly-lit front porch.
~Robert Brault
Oct 29
Why I’ll Never Retire
Between the amount of money I spend on and cheap Halloween decorations and on fireworks for the Fourth of July, I’ll never be able to retire.
This weekend, on Saturday the 25th, we had a Big Halloween Bash. In preparation for it, we’d been decorating since late August. What took two months to put up was taken down in quick fashion with the help of a few stalwart friends over the course of five, hustling hours the following day.
The photo above shows the decorations in the basement ‘staging area’, where they’ll be sorted and backed into containers before being stashed into the attic for a few years. (I can only do a party of that magnitude every so often.)
The photo is also noteworthy because it doesn’t show an entire room of decorations that has yet to be taken down. That room is the Spiders Pass (“Cirith Ungol” for my fellow Tolkien fans) – full of giant spiders, webs, and cocooned corpses. That room still stands even now in the anticipation of Trick-or-Treaters. Unfortunately, if last year was any guide, we’ll one have one group of three kids. – Still: those kids will get an eye full and clean up in candy if they come!
Oct 06
September 2014 – Quote of the Month
Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.
~ Bertrand Russell
Sep 29
Giving Up the Ghost from Sticker Shock
I was in a gift shop at a nearby hospital the other day, and since I’ve been keeping my eye out for Halloween decorations, I spotted this little, 3 inch tall ghost:
Not much to it: a cotton ball, black cutout paper eyes and mouth and a small piece of sheer white netting. Not impressed, but curious what something like this goes for in a gift shop, I flipped it over to see the price:
$16.99 (+ tax). I was curious what the manufacture charged, but I didn’t see it for sell on the manufacture’s site Giftcraft.com. Perhaps they’re handcrafted by Italian artisans and only sold on spec.
Sep 08
August 2014 – Quote of the Month
It’s a most distressing affliction to have a sentimental heart and a skeptical mind.
~ Naguib Mahfouz
Aug 31
The Driving Dead
Although I dearly, dearly love summer I’m already thinking and planning for Halloween.
On the negative side, I’m spending way too much on Halloween decorations.
On the plus side, I now expect to drive in the HOV lane thanks to my new copilot.
Jul 31
Ghostly Gettysburg
I had an occasion to visit Gettysburg Pennsylvania this weekend for a little R&R.
As expected, the area is rich in history and amazing stories: tragic and heroic.
But I was also amazed how swamped the area is with ghost stories.
The first hint came when it was posted on Facebook that we were going to Gettysburg for a long weekend. Many people commented that we should be sure to check out –such-and-such– ghost tour, or haunted –whatever-.
And then on arrival, we saw at nearly equal parts, paranormal bunk to actual history in what was being hocked in the stores of downtown Gettysburg.
I begin to realize that people had made the association of ghosts to Gettysburg due to all of the violent deaths that had occurred in the area some 151 years earlier.
As for me: I love a good ghost story. I love fantasy and all manner of fiction. However, I don’t like fiction sold as reality. Of the lot of paranormal pitches that I saw, perhaps the worst was a ‘psychic medium’ because parasitic ‘psychics’ pray on the memories and lives of the credulous.
But beyond that offense to morality, I found the real history compelling enough without having to pretend that some poor solider, who was blown apart in his prime, was stuck for all of eternity roaming the same tract of land.
Images from downtown Gettysburg:
Ghost Walks
Psychic Medium Tarot Card Readings
GPS Paranormal Investigators
Haunted Gettysburg Tours
Gettysburg Ghost Tours
Gettysburg Candlelight Ghost Tours
Fear believes, courage doubts. Fear falls upon the earth and prays. Courage stands erect and thanks. Fear is barbarism. Courage is civilization. Fear believes in witchcraft, in devils and in ghosts. Fear is religion. Courage is science.
– Robert Ingersoll
Skeptical Hippo is Skeptical
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