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 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?)
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?
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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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
