Sometimes you feel like a Hobbit. Then you hear a bustle in a hedgerow. It's just a spring clean for the May Queen. This is a medium-sized redwood in the Ladybird Johnson grove. The human figure is 6 feet in height and approximately the same in girth.
These flowers grow in the dark redwood "groves". Sometimes they catch a sunbeam.
The California coast has lots of rocks.
In Oregon, driftwood takes on strange shapes.
This is a "Stellar's" Jay. Stellar also has some seals named after him.
We went out of our way to find some of Oregon's tidal pools.
It was worth the search.
The waves carve strange fin shapes facing the Pacific.
These birds like the safety of a rock face. The white stuff is bird dukey. (Sweetheart, I'd like to kiss you but your breath smells like dukey.)
I'm picking way too many pictures for Calendar candidates.
It's still hitting "feels like" numbers of 97F. here in Sarasota, due to the humidity.
We played doubles tennis last night. The mosquitoes are still fierce. Sometimes we would halt play for a few seconds when someone got one in the eye.
On November 1 the big pool should reopen after renovations and the bar should start serving at 11am again instead of 4pm.
Still going though the summer pictures, looking for calendar picks for 2010.
Mrs. Phred is off with her tennis pro again, working on her game. She takes two lessons a week and has a hard time getting up for the 8:30 appointments.
Sunday we took Mom for a picnic on Silver Lake and a walk on a trail along the Withlacootchee River. She seemed to enjoy it.
Where to go next summer. I'm not liking the price of euros very much. Maybe will just skip all that and head for Alaska again? Maybe not.
Oh Dear! More pictures than willingness to type drivel.
I was leafing though the photo albums, looking for something special for the 2010 Firecloud Calendar.
When I got to the Death Valley stuff, I realized that at least one might rate the June cover page.
We drove though last June on the way to the California Redwoods,
The RV dash air-conditioner was kaput again, but the midday temperatures of 110 degrees did not bother us. We saw some Chevy Volts out on a desert test drive. Actually, they were "mules" with the volt drive train in a Cavalier body.
The Death Valley National Park is a strange and oddly lovely place.
No Zombies here.
It's a worthless, blasted place except for the Borax.
Still, it has it's own strange beauty.
I drove 200 miles to see Mom today. We walked about two miles in a park and then had lunch at Chili's. We had tortillas soup and half a turkey sandwich. I ordered a margarita and they brought me two in accordance with their 24/7 happy hour policy.
One might expect moviemakers to treat the subject of Zombies with respect and constant action.
Some of the great recent Zombie flicks would include "Dawn of the Dead" and "Legend" with Will Smith. Legend had a nice twist with supercharged Zombies rather than shambling corpses.
Zombieland was filled with many long, boring periods of nothing happening and the Zombies were not treated with respect. They were too easy to kill and the overlay of attempted humor was heavy-handed.
Bill Murray made a cameo appearance. but failed to add much to the movie. Woody Harrelson overplayed his role, which seemed to have echos of his "Natural Born Killers" masterpiece.
I have high hopes that the movie in making, "World War Z", will treat the Zombie population with the respect and fear to which they are entitled. Abberations like "Shawn of the Dead" and "Zombieland" are a disgrace to the genre.
The finale in an amusement park was extremely stupid. Why would any rational person turn on the lights in an amusement park and attract every Zombie within a two mile radius?
Anyway, I'm still sorting though the 2009 pixs for the magical 13 to make up the Firecloud Calendar. My SIL is now on the mailing list.
I think the reason I like Zombie movies so much is that they offer simple solutions in contrast to the complex problems we don't know how to deal with. What do we do with AIDs, poverty, Zombie banks, the recession, unemployment, global warming, peak oil or nuclear waste storage? No Idea. Zombies present simple problems...just shoot them in the head.
Zombies have a much shorter literary tradition than vampires or werewolves. Nevertheless, "American Werewolf in London" had some great music and visual effects.
My favorite horror movie of all time was "Jacob's Ladder" a truly frightening movie in which you never realized until the end that the images and experiences you were seeing were in the dying mind of a wounded Vietnam soldier given an experimental battlefield drug by the government.
In the event of an actual Zombie outbreak, my M1 Carbine and a machete would be useful and preferred tools. The local press will attempt to cover up a Zombie outbreak initially. The latest documented Zombie outbreak occured in 2003 in St. Thomas, but it was only a class-2 outbreak, easily controlled and extinguished by Homeland Security.
There are many simple things you can do to prepare for a Zombie outbreak. For example, I have in my Zombie kit a SCUBA wetsuit I can wear which is nearly bite proof as well as leather motorcycle gloves and a crash helmet with a visor. The important thing is to present as small a bite opportunity as possible.
Mrs. Phred and I invented a new game today. We started going though the prime numbers in ascending order. You get a point if your opponent misses one or names a number that's not prime. The other game we invented is going though the alphabet naming two animals for each letter. We got stumped on "X" but I have a species of horseshoe crab to spring on her next time. A varient of this game would be naming four animals per letter with two players and alternating who goes first.
Sirius radio is having a Monty Python channel this week. They're having trouble absorbing their acquisition of competitor XM Radio and paying for the merger, so their stock is down to $.63 per share, a 90% drop.
I'm still culling our 2009 pictures for The Calendar.
Of course, I called today to sign up the new Sirius Radio that came with the RV. I'd been thinking about it awhile, but the Monty Python week spurred me to action. I was a little stunned that they gave me six free months without asking for a credit card or agreement. After the six months, the cost is $100 a year. Sirius stock is up 15% in the last ten days. You can buy 100,000 shares pretty cheaply.
I listened to the "Chunky Frog" skit and the "I had it tough" skit by the four Yorkshiremen. Laughing out loud is always a good thing for your mental health. Monty Python is channel 105 for another week.
Praline
(producing box of chocolate) If I may begin at the beginning. First there is the Cherry Fondue. This is extremely nasty, but we can't prosecute you for that.
Milton
Agreed.
Praline
Next we have number four, 'Crunchy Frog'.
Milton
An, yes.
Praline
Am I right in thinking there's a real frog in here?
Milton
Yes. A little one.
Praline
What sort of frog?
Milton
A dead frog.
Praline
Is it cooked?
Milton
No.
Praline
What, a raw frog?
Superintendent Parrot looks increasingly queasy.
Milton
We use only the finest baby frogs, dew-picked and flown from Iraq, cleansed in the finest quality spring water, lightly killed, and then sealed in a succulent Swiss quintuple smooth treble cream milk chocolate envelope, and lovingly frosted with glucose.
Praline
That's as may be, but it's still a frog!
Milton
What else?
Praline
Well don't you even take the bones out?
Milton
If we took the bones out it wouldn't be crunchy would it?
Milton
What about our sales?
Praline
I'm not interested in your sales! I have to protect the general public! Now what about this one. (superintendent enters) It was number five, wasn't it? (superintendent nods) Number five Ram's Bladder Cup. (exit superintendent) What sort of confection is this?
Milton
We use choicest juicy chunks of fresh Cornish ram's bladder, emptied, steamed, flavoured with sesame seeds, whipped into a fondue and garnished with lark's vomit.
Praline
Larks vomit?
Milton
Correct.
Praline
Well it don't say nothing about that here.
Milton
Oh yes it does, on the bottom of the box, after monosodium glutamate.
Praline
(looking) Wel I hardly think this is good enough. I think it's be more appropriate if the box bore a great red label warning lark's vomit.
Milton
Our sales would plummet!
Praline
Well why don't you move into more conventional areas of confectionary, like praline or lime cream; a very popular flavor, I'm lead to understand. (superintendent enters) I mean look at this one 'cockroach cluster', (superintendent exits) anthrax ripple! What's this one: 'spring surprise'?
Milton
Ah - now, that's our speciality - covered with darkest creamy chocolate. When you pop it into your mouth steel bolts spring out and plunge straight through both cheeks.
Praline
Well where's the pleasure in that? If people place a nice chocky in their mouth, they don't want their cheeks pierced. In any case this is an inadequate description of the sweetmeat. I shall have to ask you to accompany me to the station.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:I was happier then and I had nothin'. We used to live in this tiny old house with great big holes in the roof.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:House! You were lucky to live in a house! We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, 'alf the floor was missing, and we were all 'uddled together in one corner for fear of falling.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: Eh, you were lucky to have a room! We used to have to live in t' corridor!
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: Oh, we used to dream of livin' in a corridor! Would ha' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woke up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House? Huh.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN: Well, when I say 'house' it was only a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN: We were evicted from our 'ole in the ground; we 'ad to go and live in a lake.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: You were lucky to have a lake! There were a hundred and fifty of us living in t' shoebox in t' middle o' road.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: Cardboard box?
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: Aye.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down t' mill, fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home our Dad would thrash us to sleep wi' his belt.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN: Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at six o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of 'ot gravel, work twenty hour day at mill for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to 'ave to get up out of shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick road clean wit' tongue. We had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four years, and when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit' bread knife.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN: Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won't believe you.
These flowers grow in the dark redwood "groves". Sometimes they catch a sunbeam.
The California coast has lots of rocks.
In Oregon, driftwood takes on strange shapes.
We went out of our way to find some of Oregon's tidal pools.
It was worth the search.
The waves carve strange fin shapes facing the Pacific.
These birds like the safety of a rock face. The white stuff is bird dukey. (Sweetheart, I'd like to kiss you but your breath smells like dukey.)
I'm picking way too many pictures for Calendar candidates.
