Sunday, June 30, 2019

First Impression Part Two


It dawns on me that the premise of my last post, that one never gets a second chance to make a first impression, is contradicted by the title of the song “Karn Evil #9: 1st Impression—Part 2”.



  Despite having been a fan of ELP for decades, I did not realize until I researched this blog post that the full name of the band is officially spelled out using an ampersand, as “Emerson, Lake & Palmer”.

Should Emerson, Lake & Palmer have used a serial comma?

Is a serial comma even possible with an ampersand?



Thursday, May 30, 2019

Words of Wisdom IV


You never get a second chance to make a first impression.

You do, however, get a first chance to make a second impression. 




Tuesday, April 30, 2019

Daytime Moon




Weeks ago I took this picture on one of the occasions when the moon is visible during the day.

Upon zooming, one can see the high level of detail that can be obtained with modern cameras, with not only maria but individual craters clearly visible in the picture.




We constantly hear in the media about supermoons, the phenomenon in which the moon appears slightly (though not, in my experience, noticeably) larger than normal.  And sometimes we hear about the various seasonally-named full moons, like the Pink Moon.  But we never hear about the daytime moon, which to me is much stranger.  

When I see the moon suspended in the daytime sky, I feel as if I am on some alien planet where I don’t belong. 

But then, I usually feel like that anyway.  



Saturday, March 30, 2019

The Local Noodle Restaurant


Tonight I happened to walk by the local noodle restaurant.  It was filled with teenagers.  When I was that age, my peers didn’t go to noodle restaurants.  When I was that age, though, I don’t think that noodle restaurants existed.  I imagine that for the teen demographic a noodle restaurant fulfills the two major requirements, which are that it is cheap, and that it gives them an opportunity to get away from their parents.

Whenever I see a group of young people, I can’t help thinking that I’m still one of them, or at least not far enough away from that time that I couldn’t fit in with them.  I want to approach and address them thus: “Greetings, teenagers!  I am one of you!  I belong among you!  Guns N’ Roses rocks!!  I can’t wait to watch Dana Carvey and Mike Myers on Saturday Night Live tonight!!  I have a computer that I use for word processing and video games, because those are the only possible uses for a personal computer!!  My phone is hooked into a wall!!!”

And then I come to my senses and remember that I am well over 800 years old.  Now I’m just left sitting here, wondering what happened to all that time.  And I guess that everyone is left just sitting here, wondering what happened to all that time, unless you’re one of the teenagers sitting in the noodle restaurant eating noodles.  



Thursday, February 28, 2019

The Great Unknowns


Another month has passed, and I am still not in a blogging mood, and still more in a hibernation mood.  

To give me a post for the month I’m putting up two unfocused pictures that I discovered among my recently taken digital photographs.  I don’t know what I was trying to take a picture of in either case, and I suspect that I may have taken both by accident. 





I would be interested to know, however, what that brown object in the center of the first shot is.


Thursday, January 31, 2019

January 2019


I suppose that it’s time to put something up in order to keep up my one-post-per-month rule.  I haven’t felt like blogging.  Maybe I’m still tired from all the blogging that I did in the fall.  And, at this point in the year, shouldn’t we all be hibernating?

It seems like only a few weeks ago when I was writing about how strange it was to be starting 2018.  Now 2018 is gone, and so is 1/12 of 2019.  

Anyway, here’s a picture from a few weeks ago.  It’s rare that I take a picture where the world is yellow and orange.  I find that mostly the world is nothing but grey and blue.  







Monday, December 24, 2018

Christmas Music Recommendations


Soon it will be Christmas, when we can all settle down for a long winter’s nap. And I think that we should all settle down for a long winter’s nap, a very long winter’s nap, given my previously-expressed opinion on human hibernation.

But, until then, why not relax with some of my favorite pop-rock Christmas songs (of which there aren’t many)?


This one brings back the best memories.




  I find this one the most musically interesting.




If you want that Eighties snarky attitude, try this.  




Or . . . for something that was only a year earlier, but went in an entirely different direction, specifically the direction of a depressing Seventies-style singer-songwriter Christmas, there’s this.