Michelle was very well behaved, but was afraid of the bigger critters, like the giraffes. Both Vera and my mom smoked cigarettes – Virginia Slims, I think. I didn’t like smoking even then – ash flew everywhere, sitting in the back seat while folks smoked up front was no fun, and the smoke stunk even to my 3-year-old sensibilities.
Sad to think that both Vera and Michelle are gone now – Michelle passed away years ago, and her mom left this world in the last month.
The community aspect, with comments and friend’s lists, etc, was initially off-putting, but now I rather dig the sort of community setting, even though my journal is really for my own reference.
Pyewacket says, “Soon.. it will be my turn in the sun. Soon.”
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Know what I like, dear journal? Quiet, that’s what I like.
So many ambient sounds in my life… traffic, coworkers, key-clicks.
Of course there’s good stuff, too, like my wife’s voice and Newt/Pye Purrs.
It seems like some sounds are just deafening, and unending. The roar and rattle of air conditioners, people talking up the road or down the hall, my own breathing.
I sometimes like it to be so quiet that I can hear my heart beating in my body.. or the tendons of my neck stetching like rubber bands when I turn my head…. the odd pop of a joint when I stand up, or just hold my arms out at my sides. The roar of the ocean when I get ready to yawn.
But I’d rather hear the annoying rabble noise and not miss my family and comforting sounds, than have perfect quiet.
… something called canine transmissible venereal tumor, a very rare example of what’s known as a parasitic cancer. Unlike most other contagious cancers such as cervical cancer in humans, CTVT isn’t spread by a virus but (as recently proved) by cancerous cells themselves. Genetic analysis suggests the tumor originated in an individual wolf or domesticated dog, probably in east Asia, between 200 and 2,500 years ago. This long-dead canid’s much-mutated cells are still alive and being passed along during coitus (or sometimes through casual contact) centuries later, making it the longest-lived mammalian cell line known. The disease is now found throughout the world, especially where there are large populations of strays. It can be treated with surgery, radiation, and chemo, but most otherwise healthy dogs recover spontaneously after several months.
Luckily for us, there are no known parasitic cancers in humans, and only two additional ones affect animals. One arose spontaneously in a laboratory hamster around 1960: it’s a reticulum-cell sarcoma that can be spread by casual contact, cannibalism (hamsters’ souls are a lot darker than you might think), and mosquito bites; the tumor grows in the larynx and eventually leads to suffocation. The other is a condition threatening Tasmanian devils with extinction in the wild, called devil facial-tumor disease. First noted in the 90s, it’s spread by bites; the tumors grow around the mouth and eventually cause death by starvation.
Happy Cinco de Mayo! see last year’s entry for more info on the holiday. I hope we have Mexican food for supper! [edit – BHK made Fajitas!! delicious, but my gut wasn’t happy after a suspect lunch.]
Unrelated to my feelings on Mexican food – After Saturday’s little tummy trouble, BHK and I are considering a “best public potties in SOMD” site, unless something like that is already available. For the record – The Giant supermarket in Lusby has potties that are *very* clean and easy to access.
Hm, a quick google search brought up this. (with this being the Maryland section – no Lusby… I tried to add it and the page hung. I’ll try again from a non-phone browser when I get home from my commute.)
Picture from said commute – It looks more monday-ish than it feels.
I prefer the doodle further below.
I’m skeptical, to say the least.
I do believe that there are things just outside of our perception that we know little to nothing about… but find it doubtful that ghosts (at least in the most commonly believed sense) exist – I feel pretty confident that most orb photography is dust motes or water droplets reflecting, and that all of the “ghost photos” I’ve seen were either occlusions on film or frauds.
That said – who knows what’s out in the dark? Since I have severe doubts about the existence of a soul and spirit that continues after death, what else might it be?
I believe that people have powerful wills, strong subconscious fears and imaginations – that’s probably where the bulk of most “ghosts” come from. I’ve seen things moving in the dark, been spoken to in my sleep, seen light switches flick on and off of their own accord and been sure of an unseen hand on my shoulder. All of which spooked me, none of which seem to actually contain substance outside of my noggin after looking at things in a more rational manner.
Rather than sentient beings roaming the earth, trying in vain to talk to us, I rather fancy the idea of a place or an object being psychically charged as a result of a particularly exciting and death-related event, like a war (civil war ghosts are all the rage in Maryland, it seems), murder, suicide or a mother losing her child… an imprint that replays a scene or vision over and over on a fixed location or item… or family. I feel that it’s simply fanciful thinking, no more true or likely than my having a yeti spirit guide that helps me to make the better decisions in life.
I love the idea of the ghost story, but feel in my mind and my heart that no phantoms exist outside of the minds of the living. I fear dangerous living things far more than a hand reaching out from beyond the grave to exact communication or misguided vengeance upon me or mine.
Of Course… Walpurgisnacht (Freinacht or Drudennacht) is coming, and who am I to say if the veil between our world and another won’t be made thinner at that time?
1 year ago – celtic fest w/ pics, social contract
2 years ago – poem from mm, audio books, business meeting, hand pics for BHK, sketch up, earth-friendly grenades, questions meme
3 years ago – Met the centale folks, tiki night, Laos Zombies, Country Fried Hot Rod, Nazi Monkeys, balance, courthouse disco-effect
4 years ago – playing with virtual post-its, andy back in jail
5 years ago – Free sticker, timeline post, first day at jkg, back tweak
6 years ago – newt bips a skeleton, bali music, milkshake flavors, going to the grove, Charles Bronson thoughts, breasticle nectar satisfies for only about 2 hours, going back to bus from taxi, SOP
7 years ago – Lexie is so cute!, schedule change last minute, missing her, birthday toys, Blow
http://drop.io/ is brilliant. I tested it, and it seems fun and stable.
Example – http://drop.io/scottobear
Leave voice messages at this drop.
646-495-9201 x 45671
Conference call
The number below is your drop’s private conference call line. Please note, your call will not be recorded.
218-486-3891 x 247901499
To put a fax into this drop, sender must prepend this coversheet. Sometimes a fax can take up to 30 minutes to be received.
Current settings –
Now that I’ve put this out there, I wonder how active it’ll become? Send me something, dear journal! I’ve got 100 megs just waiting. 🙂
Taken with the palmtop… sadly, it’s about impossible to get a good shot of Pyewacket, unless he’s under very bright light… he turns into a black smear with a pair of shiny yellow eyes. Newt’s black whiskers barely show, but his whites are pretty visible.
BHK made some of the best tofu/black rice stir fry last night… nom nom nom.
Midweek already! How’d that happen? No complaints, mind you, dear journal.
At just about noontime yesterday I used Shazam! as an expletive of surprise. Without irony, or mocking Cap’n Marvel / Gomer Pyle.
What’s happening to my brain?
I don’t know.
So I wrote a Haiku.
Now, I want an animal cracker. Or better, a box of animal crackers. Higher on the food chain, the better. Except for gorillas. I’d like some gorillas.
BHK made a really yummy giant salad for supper – Chris and Larry came over, but they stuck to cheesy-toast and hot dogs. More salad for me! 😀
A bit of history – Benita von Falkenhayn, also known as Baroness von Berg, had the distinction not only of being one of the last people to be legally beheaded by the heading axe in Germany, but also to have been the first female aristocrat to lose her head to the Nazis.
Once the lover of Polish intelligence agent Major Jerzy Sosnowski, Benita put some distance between them by marrying the Baron von Berg. However she and her husband remained on friendly terms with Sosnowski and mingled within the same social circles. Rumors of Sosnowski’s activity in espionage began to surface, although charges were unable to be proven.
In February 1935, the Nazis raided a party at which the Baroness, her husband, and Sosnowski were in attendance. Over fifty people were rushed off to jail and several were released after being cleared of charges of espionage and other crimes. Though secrecy shrouded the Nazi proceedings, it eventually became known that the Baroness von Berg, along with Sosnowski’s mistress Renate von Natzmer, were sentenced to death. On February 18, 1935 both women were taken to the block at Plotzensee Prison in Berlin and decapitated by the axe.
(The ‘heading axe’ , as it was called, was little more than a blunt, primitive chopper which crushed its way through the flesh and vertebrae of the victim as he or she, knelt over the block on which their head lay. The executioners axe did not always cut through on the first strike nor did it often hit its target accurately.)
In 1938, Adolph Hitler decreed that all future executions be done by hanging or guillotine.
Time Magazine Article (for future ref):
Time Magazine – Monday, Feb 25, 1935 –
There was scarcely a word in the papers. No one would mention it by telephone or letter, yet everywhere that Germans met last week, behind locked doors where no servants could hear, they talked of nothing else. What had happened to the beautiful Baroness von Berg? Would she be beheaded? Had she already been executed? Was Baron Sosnowski in jail? Had he been sent back to Poland?
For a year details of the story have been leaking out (TIME, Nov. 19). Baron George (“Yurek”) Sosnowski is an extremely handsome young Pole who served gallantly in the Austrian Army, loves women, excitement. Deeply infatuated with him was the beautiful Baroness Benita von Berg, a blonde whose first husband was Richard von Falkenhayn, son of the late great General von Falkenhayn. Berlin society knew that it was to escape the influence of Polish Baron Sosnowski that beauteous, divorced Benita married stolid Baron von Berg. Curiously, all four remained friendly, all went to the same parties. Sosnowski’s parties were enough to set Berlin gossips hissing like snakes. People not invited insisted that there were buckets of champagne, sexual orgies.
About a year ago the mother of a Frau von Natzmer, well-born German girl serving as a secretary in the Ministry of Defense, went to the Ministry to complain that her daughter was being made to work too late at night. The official whose secretary she was knew that she had done very little overtime work. He reported the matter to Nazidom’s secret police.
Last February Baron Sosnowski gave another party, officially for his latest protegee, a dancer. Berlin’s half-world knew what to expect. With glittering eyes they hurried to his apartment. This time a whole cordon of secret police were waiting at the door. Many times had the Baron Sosnowski been suspected of espionage. No charge ever stuck. He blamed his luck on a curious signet ring that he always wore. Several weeks before this last party he lost his ring pulling the Baroness von Berg’s puppy from a canal.
All the guests, over 50, were rushed to jail, many of them kept there for days without a chance to change the evening clothes that they had come in. Then the weeding out started. One of the first to be released was Baroness von Berg’s first husband, von Falkenhayn. He turned out to be a member of the secret police himself.
As iron Nazi secrecy clamped down, the Sosnowski case became a lurid legend, strictly censored in the German Press, totally baffling to correspondents until they were able to tell the U. S. Embassy that languishing in jail and possibly about to be beheaded for “treason” was an inoffensive young U. S. music student, Miss Isobel Lillian Steele. Diplomatic pressure forced Germany to disgorge Miss Steele (TIME, Jan. 7), even the secret police finally admitting that she was guilty of nothing. But the music student had been innocently acquainted with Baroness von Berg, proceeded to spill all sorts of Sosnowski facts, and is now hard at work in a Manhattan hotel dashing off Sosnowskiana for tabloids and writing a book.
In Berlin last week the Sosnowski case finally reached its grim denouement before the People’s Court. This is packed exclusively with Hitler appointees, five of them aviators. Only the Realmleader can alter its judgments, which take precedence over the German Supreme Court, kicked by Nazi New Justice into discard. Normally the People’s Court lets its sentences of death be known only after the guilty heads have been chopped. Last week by a great exception underground Berlin grapevines got out word that the Court had sentenced Baroness von Berg and Frau von Natzmer to death, had let off with life imprisonment Baron Sosnowski and two unnamed female employees of the Defense Ministry. Only one question remained, would the two doomed German women die by the Nazi ax, or by the method to which spies are traditionally privileged, a firing squad?
To find out anything whatever at Plotzensee Prison, even when correspondents arrived armed with official passes, proved almost impossible. Not until the enormous prison hearse drew up and two bodies were slid in, would anyone reconstruct what had been done in the cold, misty dawn.
“They were shot,” said officials at first, then “They were beheaded.” Accustomed to such bare-faced lies, the newshawks patiently pecked for details, finally satisfied themselves that an axing had occurred. With the backs of their heads shaved bald, the Baroness von Berg and Frau von Natzmer were led in coarse, nondescript prison garb to the blood-caked block from which so many heads now roll in the sawdust. The headsman, incongruous in his yellowish celluloid shirtfront, his old silk hat and his red-spotted tailcoat, raised the gleaming ax. Twice it swished down to sever a lovely neck and send the blood of a German woman spouting high. According to Nazis, the Baroness von Berg was the first female aristocrat to lose her head to their New Justice.
BHK and I aren’t watching as much TV as usual… I suspect we’re hitting an ebb tide right now. However, things may change once the new shows start rolling in again. I believe that there was a new Samantha, Who on last night, and I imagine that once Psych and Burn Notice start to roll again, we’ll be watching at least a few hours a week.
After supper last night, we came home, had some razzles and read (or did Internet research on the Tidal Basin Inlet Bridge – had to find out what was up with this sculpture/grotesque on the side.)
50 things you’ve done meme continues at 47 – I…
47.’built more than a few models as a kid. Not always well-done…. but I always did ’em to completion, even if some got the lighter treatment for “battle damage”. At my youngest, I did snap-together models of cars that could be played with right afterward – pretty rewarding… the more advanced ones like aircraft carriers and tanks always had guns and tiny airplanes that would easily fall off or break if played with too roughly…. plus, dust and dirt wrecked paint jobs.
This might be why I’m a little attracted to Warhammer or just painting minis. Models you can play with are something extra special. I still don’t know if I want to do Warhammer Fantasy or some other system… meanwhile, I may just get some paints and work on army men / mage knight leftover figures that could use a little color or customization. I’m due to make BHK and myself some updated figures, as I don’t have long hair anymore, and I never did make one of her.
Maybe it’s time for us to investigate Fimo and the like, too? Image on the right is an ancient one of Danny and me fending off a few zombies on a papercraft bridge.
Long weekend starts tonight! BHK and I had yummy pseudo-chicken, noodles and broccoli supper. After work today, I think we’re going to hit a movie and dinner out… nice way to start the long weekend. Despite my general disdain for reality tv, I’m sort of digging Last Restaurant Standing. (I’m rooting for Lloyd and Adowa, but suspect that the Twins will win.)
Yummy Quiche & Salad for supper last night… more for lunch today! Took it Easy last night. some forgettable TV and read more of Mignola’s Baltimore, or The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire. Slow at first but it’s rolling along reasonably well now.
Actually, most of my GFs have been of a similar mindset where reading is concerned… but I have always liked nerd / geek / Rockabetty types.
Here are 10 of my “scare off potential ‘normal girl’ dates” books currently on the shelf – I’ll leave it to BHK to do her own books, if she desires.
[edit -later] I tried, and failed. I have very little truly objectionable material – I couldn’t get to 10. Instead, here’s a grouping of what you might find weird or not on the shelves.
I’m mostly proud of the hut, as it has provided a lot of good information for women’s health… it was the first of its kind on livejournal, thought there are many more good resources in place now. I’ve only had to deal with a few instances of spamming, trolling or the like on any of them.
BHK sick … Nothing serious, but she’s got a tummy bug. Party food and pizza was rough on her innards I think. After Alice’s party yesterday, we swung by Games Workshop – picked up a present for someone else and a warhammer (fantasy) rulebook for me. BHK looks interested in painting minis… maybe we’ll build an army or two, to add to the games closet?
I’m eyeing lizard men and ogres,(primarily for yhetees ) or my old standby of dwarfs vs orcs & goblins. (might get the battle for skull pass starter kit, comes with the latter)
We went to the aquarium last night! pictures and details later – what a nice idea of BHK though… open until 9pm friday night.
Things on the agenda:
Allergy Shots.
Alice’s Party.
Dinner out – Maybe Paper Moon or some Baltimore location.
Rest, relax, recharge.
Got Next Friday off – BHK and I are going to check out the cherry blossom festival or some other fun thing as a little spring fling. I’m almost more interested in people-watching than taking in the beautiful blooms. Hopefully, going on a weekday will reduce mob issues. (Friday’s cherry blossom events ) I wouldn’t mind paying the Jefferson Memorial a stopover, or riding a paddle boat in the tidal basin.
Weekend looms ahead! Going to Alice’s party, celebrating her passing the bar… about a year ago. It’ll be nice to see her again – last time was at paper moon well over a year ago.
The Egg salad made from last Sunday’s hard-boiled Easter dye-jobs was especially good this week. BHK’s Mac & cheese is rocking my socks exceptionally well, too.
I can’t believe that tickets fro the Smothers brothers is $90 at the rams head. I want to go, but not so much at $200, 8pm on a weeknight. I still have half a mind to write in Pat Paulson for president, even though he passed away over a decade ago.
Presidential Campaign Slogan: “I’ve upped my standards. Now, up yours.”
