A Last 2021 Pandemic Post

  The year is almost over, but there is still time for one more blog post, one more to add to the year’s undersized total. 

Once again, despite my dislike of serious topics, I must address the pandemic.  

At the beginning of summer, we naively believed that the pandemic was ending, and for a brief time we all took off our masks at the supermarket; then there came the delta variant.  And now we have the omicron variant, which spreads much faster but is less severe than earlier variants.  

There are two hypotheses about how our society will be affected:

One is is that the omicron variant will infect so many people that our hospitals will be overwhelmed, leaving many important health services unavailable for the foreseeable future.  

The other is that the omicron variant will infect a huge number of people with relatively few fatalities, thus conferring natural immunity on enough people to effectively end the pandemic.  

Or maybe it will do both of these things. 

Or maybe it will do neither. 

Or maybe it will do some things that we haven’t even imagined, like somehow going back in time to infect people in prior years.  

That is how things in general have been going for the last 22 months or so.  

The Worst Christmas Songs

 

Christmas is over, but the Christmas season is still here, as the above Antarctic Christmas cartoon penguin can attest.  I suppose that I should be engaged in mirth and merriment, but I have returned to the blog to put up a belated Christmas post.

In previous years I have blogged about my favorite pop-rock Christmas songs, and about one Christmas song very particular to the local area.  I thought that I would follow up on these with a post on the two worst Christmas songs of all time.  (In a way, though, I felt that I shouldn’t do this, because even commenting on how bad these songs are might in some way be promoting them, and they should not be promoted.)

One could write multiple volumes on why each of these songs is terrible, but I will let them speak for themselves:

The Ghost of Museums Past

The summer of 2021 marked the ten year anniversary of the closure of the Smithsonian Naturalist Center in Loudoun County, Virginia.  The Naturalist Center was a microcosm of the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History, containing minerals, rocks, fossils, preserved plants and animals, and even a few anthropological items.  Visitors got to not just look at the specimens, but touch and closely examine them, and go through drawers to see the Center’s full collections, something not possible at other museums.  

I used to volunteer there when I was young, or at least younger than I am now.  

The Naturalist Center came into existence in the Seventies (I think); it was housed in the Natural History Museum until late 1995, when it was moved out to make space for an IMAX theater.  An agreement was made with the government of Loudoun County under which the Center would be given a site in an office park by the Leesburg Airport to function as a resource for science education in the Loudoun County school system.  This arrangement was only supposed to last for a few years, but ultimately it continued until 2011.

I started volunteering at the Center to give myself something to do in the summer after I graduated from college, when the collections were being packed up for the move to Loudoun; I enjoyed it so much that I ended up driving out to the Loudoun location every week or two for the next fifteen years as my various work schedules would allow. 

I would work with the fossils and the preserved reptiles and amphibians, cataloging new specimens, repairing things that broke, putting together a few skeletons, and otherwise engaging with the collections.  And occasionally, some member of the public would bring in or send in something to be identified, and I would take a look at it.  (I posted about the absolute strangest such incident several years ago.) 

Ultimately, some powerful people in the Smithsonian decided that the Naturalist Center needed to move back into the Natural History Museum in Washington, DC.  Unfortunately, when the Center was returned to the District, most of the collections were dispersed for various reasons.  The new version that was eventually unveiled is known as Q?rius, which has a lot fewer specimens, and a lot more video screens.  And since working with the specimens was what I enjoyed, I don’t have much interest in Q?rius (nor can I even remember how to spell it without extensive research). 

Anyway, Naturalist Center was fun, as a few things in life are, and it is gone, as many things in life are. 

Here are some videos that I shot in the last year before the Naturalist Center closed, and posted on YouTube about five years ago for the enjoyment of former volunteers.  

It’s Not Always Pareidolia

Earlier in the year I wrote a blog post about seeing a piece of wood that looked like a sea monster floating in the Potomac River.  

In June I saw a smaller piece of wood that looked like a beaver bobbing up and down in the same river.  I photographed the wood, thinking that it would make a good basis for a follow-up post demonstrating the same phenomenon. 

But, upon downloading the photo to my computer and zooming in . . . it was a beaver.  

A Strange Pole Arm at the Battle of Caen

A few months ago, Wikipedia featured an article on the Battle of Caen, a conflict in which the English attacked the French town of Caen in 1346.  The article was illustrated by a super-awesome painting from Froissart’s Chronicles. 

As I examined that painting in detail, I noticed something very odd about one of the pole weapons (as Wikipedia calls them) or pole arms (as we knew them back in Dungeons & Dragons days) being used by a soldier.  I present the relevant portion of the image below:

 

The man on the right is holding what looks like an ornate glaive.  (I included a glaive in a Halloween illustration on the blog many years ago.)  But what caught my attention was the object that the man on the left wields, something that I, speaking as a casual fan of Medieval weaponry, cannot identify.  The wooden shaft is topped by a pointed spear head, and there are what appear to be two metal disks mounted on opposing sides of the spear head, with a spike protruding from the center of each disk.     

This particular weapon is not some unique aberration; there are two at least additional weapons of the same type in another section of the image (posted below), as well as other possible (though unclear) examples elsewhere in the picture.

In my research, I did find other pole weapons that were similar in that they had a pair of spikes or blades on the opposing sides of a spear head, such as the ranseur and the Bohemian earspoon. (And doesn’t everybody need a Bohemian earspoon?)  But there was nothing with anything close to those metal disks at the base of the spikes. 

From a Dungeons & Dragons perspective, it seems that we are looking at something that didn’t occur even in E. Gary Gygax’s wildest dreams.

I will also note that weapon in question does not appear on the phylogenic diagram of pole arms shown below.  (Was the phylogeny derived using cladistic analysis?)

Halloween Thoughts 2021

The darkness of winter is approaching, and encroaching, and other such words; the pumpkins and plastic skeletons and fake spider webs have gone out in front yards; Halloween is almost here.  In the summer of 2020, I thought that the pandemic might be mostly over by Halloween of that year, and, Halloween being on a Saturday, people would use the occasion to release the tension of the previous months with some wild partying . . . but then the pandemic flared up again, and Halloween pretty much didn’t happen.  This year though, despite the continuing pandemic, we are, maybe, possibly, having Halloween.  And Halloween will be on a Sunday, which, while not quite as good as a Saturday, is better than a Monday.  

On Sunday (October 24) I went into the Old Town section of Alexandria.  I was surprised to see a number of people, and an even bigger number of dogs, wearing Halloween costumes. 

Is the fact that there were people walking around in costumes one week early evidence that Halloween will be super-crazy this year?

Or is it just part of the phenomenon of Halloween taking over the entire month of October?

Or, since I saw many more dogs than people in costumes, is one week before Halloween now Dogoween? 

* * * * * * * *

My Sunday visit also made me think more deeply about the twin topics of Halloween and Old Town.  

Halloween awakens my longstanding ambition to write fiction (which, like all my ambitions, remains unfulfilled), and, in this specific case, fantasy-horror fiction.  And Old Town, a genuine Colonial setting with narrow alleyways, walled gardens, and half-concealed cellar doors, seems like the perfect environment to fill my mind with visions of the unnatural and terrifying things about which I would want to write. 

Yet that never happens.

Maybe it is because I just don’t have the capacity to be inspired toward storytelling.  Or maybe it is because Old Town is a thoroughly modernized, well-maintained, touristy city, and not the sort of dilapidated, half-abandoned urban area where there could conceivably be evil fish-men lurking in the shadows. 

Of course, if you have seen any evil fish-men lurking in the shadows of Old Town, please let me know in the comment section.

 

Norm Macdonald

  Last month I put up a post with a video from Saturday Night Live in the Nineties.

And then, before I could put up anything else, Norm Macdonald died.  

Macdonald was on the show from 1993 to 1998, so he came in at the end of what I consider to have been the SNL’s golden age.  He was one of the last truly funny people on the show. 

I thought that he should have had a much bigger career than he did, based on how funny I found him, but maybe he was just too smart and idiosyncratic to have had widespread appeal.

Years ago I mentioned one of Macdonald’s best-known Weekend Update jokes, concerning the band Better Than Ezra.  He also delivered the absolute greatest Weekend Update line of all time, presented on the first episode following the acquittal of O. J. Simpson:

Delta, Delta, Delta Variant, Can I Help Ya, Help Ya, Help Ya?

If there is anything good about the delta variant of COVID-19, it is that it reminds us of a vanished, better time when Saturday Night Live was actually funny.

Notes:

1. I would not rank the Delta Delta Delta sketches as among the funnier material from that era of SNL, but they are ten times better than anything on the show now.  

2. Years after I first watched those sketches, I was shocked to learn that Delta Delta Delta is a real sorority; the members were not happy about how they were portrayed.  

3. A character in the above sketch discusses the minerals calcite and halite, which is almost certainly the only time that those minerals have been mentioned on SNL, and possibly the only time that they have been mentioned on network television in general.  

Bald Eagles for (the Day After) the Fourth of July

On July fifth I came across a pair of Bald Eagles on the Potomac River.  I tried taking several pictures, but since the eagles were at a considerable distance most of the pictures came out blurry. 

This first shot, in which one of the birds took to the wing just as I took the picture, could have been really epic, but unfortunately it was one of the blurry ones.  

Only one photo turned out clearly. 

Post-Pandemic Thoughts

After a year and three months, the pandemic situation is ending.  More and more Americans are vaccinated, and the rate of infection is decreasing.  Soon our masks will be put away, and we can return to our old habit of coughing on random strangers.  

And the general opinion is that we should also return to the relentless, relentless pace of our pre-pandemic lives.  

It seems to me that after all the pandemic stress, what we need instead is a long rest. 

But then, I always feel as if I need a long rest.  

Cicadas Are Here Again

 

Brood X of the seventeen-year cicada (Magicicada septendecim) has emerged from the ground, as one can see from the above image of a discarded exoskeleton.  Judging by their body parts strewn on the ground, many don’t make it, but others take to the trees and produce a call that sounds like the transporter from Star Trek.  Cicadas are a big news story, at least in this part of the country. 

(Note: Brood X should not be confused with Brand X, a jazz fusion group in which Phil Collins played drums in the Seventies.)

About a week ago I came upon the bizarre scene shown below.  A cicada was missing its abdomen entirely, but the head and thorax were still alive and walking, pulling along some kind of predatory wasp.  Presumably the wasp had eaten away the cicada’s abdomen, and was in the process of eating the rest of the cicada.  

As Dieter would say . . . truly disturbing.  

The Potomac Monster

I noticed this piece of wood floating in the Potomac at the end of last year and took some pictures.  

What really interests me is how sea-monstery the wood looks.

It kind of reminds me of the (somewhat) famous Mansi photograph, which purportedly shows the Lake Champlain monster (and which is extensively addressed in this Twitter thread by Darren Naish).

 

My Jimmy Fallon Christmas Dream

In the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, I had a Christmas-themed dream.  I wanted to blog about it at the time, but never got around to it.  Now Christmas is long gone.  And in general people don’t like to hear about other people’s dreams.  But it’s my blog, and I’ll do what I want.

In the dream, I was working at Saturday Night Live twenty years ago. (I must have been a writer, because I have neither the talent nor the charisma to be a cast member.)  A large group of people from the show was gathered in a hallway.  Jimmy Fallon began to sing an improvised Christmas song.  In the gaps between his lines, I would improvise lyrics of my own, creating a call-and-response effect.  (Of the phrases that I sang, the only one that I can remember is “I wanna sleep this Christmas”.  Those who have read the blog regularly will know that this is true.)

Then, as the song built to its dramatic conclusion, Tina Fey started rapping. 

Everyone viewed the song as a great success.  There was talk of the group performing it again, and even recording it.  (Presumably, the other people present were somehow involved in the song, though I don’t remember exactly how; maybe they just clapped rhythmically in the background.)  Fallon convinced NBC to let us to perform the song live in the 10:30 pm time slot.  But he felt that what had made the song special was its spontaneity, and he forbade the rest of us from practicing so as to preserve this feeling of spontaneity.  

We all assembled for the live broadcast, and I thought about how I would have to tell all my friends about it.  As the show began, Fallon spoke an introduction, which included him saying, “Bill Robinson sings some great background vocals,” and I thought about how Jimmy Fallon had gotten my name wrong on national television.  

 

We sang.

But, because Fallon hadn’t let us practice, our performance turned out to be a disaster, and everyone was disappointed.  

 

Eastern Musk Turtle

I needed a post for February before it ended.  As always, there are lots of blog entries that I want to write, but I just don’t have the time or energy to write them.  

I’m putting up this picture of an Eastern Musk Turtle (Sternotherus odoratus).  They’re rarely seen because they spend most of their time underwater, but I found this one basking in Maryland in 2019.  

The Skink Sleeps Tonight (and the Rest of the Winter)

I need to post something before January slips away, but I’ve had a hard time doing that, because this is the time of year when I feel that we should all be hibernating.  (And very specifically I feel that I should be hibernating.)  Speaking of which, here is something that gets to spend January in a torporous state, the Five-lined Skink (Plestiodon fasciatus).  It is the only species of lizard that is common in this area, and I have blogged about it many times before.  

This individual is interesting in that it seems to be stuck in a state of awkward adolescent, showing both the blue tail of a juvenile and the red facial coloration of a mature male.