I haven’t had time this year to post much more than a few random photos to keep up my personal goal of at least one post per month.
I suppose that it’s time to write something to sum up the year, but I don’t know how to do that, so I’ll just put up this close-up of ice in a bird bath.
Maybe it is too late to bother mentioning this, but in the episode of Saturday Night Live following my earlier post, Bobby Moynihan did return to the show—not as Anthony Crispino to get “Lee Zeldin” confused with “Led Zeppelin” but rather to reprise his Drunk Uncle character, and his part in the David S. Pumpkins sketch with Tom Hanks, who is now 157 years old.
Halloween is here again, when the darkness and chill of the evening lead me to expect that I’ll be attacked by werewolves, or something. Ever year Halloween inspires me to blogging. (You can click on the Halloween tag and read all my old Halloween entries. In fact, you probably should do that, and give up on whatever else you were planning to do.) But this year, all that I have is a few random observations.
*For a few years I blogged about the anatomical errors in decorative plastic Halloween skeletons. That topic is now exhausted, but I did see a dachshund skeleton that brings that absurdity of the general dog skeleton design to new levels.
*I noticed that supermarkets were displaying candy for Halloween back in August. I assume that the plan is that people will buy their Halloween candy in August, then lose control and eat it before Halloween, and then have to buy more. (And perhaps the cycle will be repeated several times.)
*One of the most remarkable features of Halloween in recent years has been the proliferation of various yard decorations, the skeletons, ghosts, spiders, spider webs, etc. Every year the decorations get bigger and crazier and more abundant. I have to think that such displays are only possible because children are no longer free-range. I imagine that back in the Eighties, when at least some kids were allowed out on Halloween night unsupervised, the older, “cooler” kids would have absolutely trashed any ghosts or skeletons in someone’s front yard.
Last month saw the release of a series of images from photographer (and lawyer) Alper Yesiltas, who used artificial intelligence to try to depict what various celebrities who had died young would look like if they were alive today.
(They tend to appear rather disheveled, but since many of them were hippies that may be appropriate.)
I find it astounding that, had he lived, Jimi Hendrix would have turned into Albert Einstein . . .
. . . and even more astounding that Michael Jackson would have somehow managed to regrow his original nose.
Saturday Night Live has been going downhill for the last thirty years or so, but one of the few elements in those years that was (possibly) mildly amusing was Bobby Moynihan’s Anthony Crispino character.
It’s too bad that Anthony Crispino isn’t around now, seeing as how Led Zeppelin is running for governor of New York.
More specifically, they look large Large Milkweed Bugs (Oncopeltus fasciatus).
Few things are this colorful.
(Click to enlarge.)
I have blogged photos of a bird standing atop a turtle not once but twice before. (Here we see another example of a Ring-billed Gull with a Red-bellied Turtle.) I am starting to think that this sort of situation is not all that uncommon.
An internet search reveals that a bird (and in particular a crane) standing on a turtle is a common theme in sculpture. I suppose that I should post some pictures of these sculptures, but I don’t have the energy to do that.
Recently I saw a Red-shouldered Hawk (Buteo lineatus), which seems to be the only kind of hawk that I ever see. It was sitting in a tree by the river on a cold and very windy day.
This was probably my best picture.
This would have been a good picture if I had gotten all of the bird’s head into the frame.
And this might have been a good picture if it had been in focus.
It is more than a month since Christmas, and some people still have their Christmas lights up (although, as one can tell from the above picture, they are hard to photograph).
At this point, do the people who have these lights even think of them as Christmas lights, or as some kind of general winter lights?
I don’t like Christmas lights in January, because they remind me that the Christmas season is over, and it won’t be back for a long time.
A similar phenomenon that I noticed in the fall is that some people will put out Halloween pumpkins, and then after Halloween the pumpkins become Thanksgiving pumpkins, and stay out until the end of November. But then other people put out their Christmas lights before Thanksgiving, and so there is a period of overlap in which some houses have pumpkins, and adjacent houses have Christmas lights.
That is a contrast of textures, or flavors, or whatever, that I really don’t like.
Squirrels do seem to like the pumpkins, though.
