Blurry Rabbit, Trix Are for Kids

 

A Small Amount of Tinsel

 

UPDATE 12/28—This was supposed to be my Christmas photo, but looking at it now I realize that it is not at all Christmassy. 

Mushrooms in the Grass

 

Halloween Listening IV

 

We have time for one more song that brings the spookiness, “John Barleycorn”, which is actually a modern arrangement of a traditional English folk song by Traffic (which, for the uninitiated, was one of Steve Winwood’s bands before his solo career):

Halloween Listening III

 

And, speaking of the Mellotron (as I did in my last post), I can’t leave out King Crimson, whose first album is my traditional late-night Halloween listening.

The album might not be scary, but it’s definitely otherworldly.  (Pete Townshend called it “an uncanny masterpiece”.)

Here is the album’s epic conclusion, “The Court of the Crimson King”:

Halloween Listening II

We move on from the Doors to another of my favorite bands, Genesis, who have a few potential candidates for Halloween music.

The only time that I have actually been scared listening to music is the first time that I heard Phil Collins laugh in “Mama”.

And “Home by the Sea/Second Home by the Sea” is the story of a burglar who breaks into a house, only to be taken capture and held forever by the ghosts who live there, yet the music itself isn’t really all that scary (though it is some of their greatest instrumental work).

Ultimately my pick for the best Genesis Halloween song would be “Entangled”.  It starts out merely a little bit eerie, but the ending, featuring a quavering synthesizer solo underlain by a sinister Mellotron choir, moves into decidedly ominous and unsettling territory:

 

 

Halloween Listening I

It’s the Halloween season, which means that radios and the piped-in music systems of supermarkets are giving us endless repetitions of “Thriller” and the theme from Ghostbusters.  I want something a little different, though. I’ve always preferred songs for Halloween where the music itself sets a scary mood, and not just pop songs that happen to mention something supernatural. 

Many years ago, when I wrote blog items for Marc Brush’s now-defunct Wandering Army site, I addressed the topic.  (You can read that post here, on my other blog, where I put up some of my old Wandering Army writings.)

I’m returning to that subject here, using the magic of YouTube video embedding, to recommend a few specific songs for your listening pleasure, or perhaps your listening terror, or at least vague listening unease.

We’ll start with one of a my favorite bands, a band known for their mastery of musical darkness, the Doors. They have a lot of strong Halloween contenders, like “Riders on the Storm”, “Strange Days”, and “End of the Night”.

But my vote for their scariest (and one of the scariest of all time) is “Not to Touch the Earth”, which is like listening to someone’s nightmare unfolding in real time:

 

It’s Happened Again

 

I noted earlier how this blog had mysteriously gotten 8,670 views for the month of June, which is probably 8,600 more than it would normally get.

When I put up my most recent post, I noticed that Scaly Distractions got more than 10,000 views in September, which is pretty good for a blog that no one actually reads.  

Here is a graph of this blog’s views for roughly the month of September:

And, for comparison, here is a graph of the blog’s traffic over its entire lifespan:

In my earlier post I speculated that the culprits were Russian bots, but I read somewhere since then that it could be Chinese bots, searching for a point of access for a cyber-attack.  And so maybe this blog is the key to hacking Blogger, or Google, or America, or something.

The Painted Turtle Again

It’s the same pond, the same pose, and almost certainly the same turtle as before, but this time with a generous helping of duckweed.

(The earlier photo is from March, this one is from July.)

 

This May Be Asking a Bit Much of the UPS Guy

 

What’s Going on With This Blog?

This blog is not the sort of thing that many people would read.  Recently I have only had time to post once a month, and mostly I’ve been posting decidedly non-spectacular photographs.  I only expect it to be read by my family and friends . . . and only when I specifically ask them to read it . . . and I haven’t done that in a while. 

Rarely I may get as many as twenty views per day, but usually it’s closer to zero.  

But at the end of last month, when I posted my last entry, I checked the statistics, and found that Scaly Distractions had gotten over 8,000 views for the month of June.  (I haven’t checked the statistics for this month yet.)

Here it is in graph form:

What happened?

I have no idea.  

The standard explanation in situations like this would be “Russian bots”, but I don’t know what even Russian bots would want with this blog.  

Spring Scene: Male Mallard

 

It is the end of June, so technically it is too late for a spring scene. 

But then again, this picture is from late February, so it is too early for a spring scene.

(The Wood Frog and Painted Turtle are from early March, the Osprey is from May.)

Spring Scene: Osprey at Its Nest

 

Spring Scene: Wood Frog and Eggs

 

Spring Scene: Painted Turtle in the Sun

 

Starling, Plus Geometric Shapes

 

Orange Dragonfly From Last Summer

 

Riverine Scene