Perhaps you have already seen this one-take spin around a school where everyone is possessed by the Thriller. If not, see it now an
Although I was given my first radio in 1983, and one of the first pop tunes to become lodged in my head in those early days was Beat It, I admit Thriller never really did it for me. Maybe it was the frikkin' weird eyes Michael Jackson suddenly thought it would be fun to leave me screaming at. But of course I know it backwards and forwards and have the shirt and the glove and in the years since have gotten to appreciate it for the cult classic it is, and part of my brain is screaming at me to point out that yes, of course I love Thriller, don't be silly, it's got Vincent Price! I'm just dead inside. Dead like a juicy, juicy zombie.
You all are no doubt hopped up on candy and want me to cut to the good stuff, so I now bring you something so incredible, I nearly wept at the thought of so many kids getting together to do the same thing and not one stick the mud to be seen. I have no idea what that's like. It's beautiful to watch. I've had too much sugar.
168 hours to go before the majority of Americans head off to vote on various things, I'm going to let my political opinions seep into the blog this week starting with this crosspost from my LJ hitting up Californians to Vote NO on Prop 8 and if you're in Florida, Say No to Amendment 2:
1) Being gay is not natural.
And real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning, tattoos, piercings and silicon breasts...
2) Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay.|
In the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.
3) Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior.
People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract. Lamps are next.
4) Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn't changed at all;
Hence why women are still property, blacks still can't marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.
5) Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed;
And we can't let the sanctity of Britney Spears' 55-hour just-for-fun marriage be destroyed.
6) Straight marriages are valid because they produce children.
So therefore, gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn't be allowed to marry because our population isn't out of control, our orphanages aren't full yet, and the world needs more children.
7) Obviously gay parents will raise gay children,
Since, of course, straight parents only raise straight children.
8) Gay marriage is not supported by religion.
In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That's why we have only one religion in America.
9) Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home.
Which is exactly why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.
10) Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms.
Just like we haven't adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans.
Re-post this if you believe love makes a marriage. Vote NO on Prop 8
For anyone who loves Peggle, or just going insane, Weebl's stuff is hosting a game called Fireflies, a misleading title for something as totally unrelaxing and frustratingly evil as this fabulous thing is.
I got stuck on some levels and just stayed there. I'm still there. I may never leave.
Last Saturday Nan found The Abandoned, which proves Spain is steadily creeping up on Japan for makers of the scariest frikkin' films imaginable. Disturbing scary, I mean. Really disturbing.
Then we watched Gone Baby Gone, which Nan and I had caught the end of a few days before, but then I taped for Mum to see because she totally loves Ben Affleck. Hee! I mean, we thought she'd like to see it because it's a really good movie. Rough story, and I don't entirely think I know what the hell I'd have done in that position, not that I'd ever be in that position because even when I was nine and went through my whole "I'm going to be a detective!" phase, I never left my house. The Internet was made for me. But that's beside the point. Gone Baby Gone is really really good.
Nan found Guyver 2: Dark Hero which is a sequel to the somewhat clever Mark Hamill movie The Guyver. Mark Hamill is not in the sequel, but the extras from every Power Rangers cut scene ever try to make up for it...not really. I'm sure there's a very good comic book geek reason for what goes on in this movie but the rubber suit smackdown at the end with the girl yelling, "Dad!" at one of the strange creatures cracked me up. How does she know. I wasn't paying much attention to the movie until the end so I don't know, maybe she was aware beforehand she was related to a huge mutant bear/roach. There were a load of seemingly random action scenes and I was in the middle of a story outline, so...I just don't know.
Just like I don't know what was up with the anime Nazi vampire musical that was on the next night after the werewolf movie (The Company Of Wolves)...I totally got some sort of street germ up my nose and spent the early part of the week reliving my entire childhood, sneezing, looking clueless, leaving a trail of tissues to find my way home...ah, autumn.
Something great happened this week, though. To look at it now, no one would think the stained gutter over the porch is such a great thing, but this gutter is now, for the first time in seven years, not sagging, not pouring water up into the porch roof, and no longer rotting the wood behind it. The wood had to be replaced too, but now it's done. All better. It involved the exchange of money for services, but to know that the porch is on its way to no longer resembling the entry to a crackhouse thanks to my stingy ways was my Christmas present this year. The guys who did it also cleaned the gutters, so that's taken care of for a while.
Other movies Nan found were Isle of the Dead and The Body Snatcher, which were both full of Boris Karloff goodness; and Secret of The Cave, which sort of fit into that theme of weird stuff going on and...it was one of those kid gets sent off to family and has such a good time that it will never ever wear off ever movies. I don't know if I believe that really happens, although I do tend to flash back to New Fairfield circa 1980 every time I hear anything from Glass Houses. I don't get these kids in movies, in my day we were content with using spoons to dig holes and didn't feel the need to go running off to well-lit Irish caves somewhere in torrential downpours on a whim. I don't think I did, anyway. Unless you substitute "Irish cave" for "doll my Mum didn't pack," and swap "me" with "Mum," possibly converting "running off" to "borrowing a car," and thoroughly confounding the whole thing with the lack of mysterious Irish townsfolk. I'm still coming off the cold medicine.
While I could tie this post in with my discovery of dozens of (non-glowing) mushrooms scattered all over my backyard, the truth is the other night while I was trying to find the link for my amazing Star Wars action figures, I Googled Darth Gumby because I couldn't remember where I'd left parts of my own website, and I found that since the demise of my former self on the banks of...wherever the hell that was, others have taken up the title.
Edward Lupinacci wrote this poem, which is freaky in the "all these songs are about my life" kind of way that makes me wonder if I didn't really mean the green clay guy all along (I did not, it was always my very British Mr. Gumby).
There's also an Australian guy on MySpace who likes cars, but there's no Pontiac Grand Ville so there's no freaky connection.
This has been a "I wrote this late one night when I couldn't bring myself to go on about politics" post.
Signing up for NaNoWriMo again this year, I ended up discovering a website that runs vocabulary-building multiple choice words by you, and for each correct match, the UN World Food Program somehow finds this out and sends 20 grains of rice to...they don't say. They donate rice. Seeing how I've clicked on The Animal Rescue Site for about ten years now, I'm guessing my vocabulary is about to get way better.
Which is good, because when I found FreeRice I was in the middle of my usual transformation into Nell and I could use, uh...that.
First I had no one to do the sign language with, then I had no one do speak Spanish to, then the brain mites came for my English.
When the people who created Charlie The Unicorn put something out, you can bet it'll be so good I don't even have to think of anything to hype it. Because I'm watching it and can't think of anything right now. It's hilarious. Kittens and puppies, I give you Detective Mittens: The Crime Solving Cat.
I mis-quoted an Elton John song in my last post, and I realized the Elton John tags could totally be taken the wrong way if the reader did not know WTH I was on about. It's almost from one of the greatest Elton John songs ever, Harmony, but I always twist it from "You're not unlucky knowing me," because growing up I didn't hear the "un," and I came up with an entire story based this song, which is something I used to be able to do with songs that came out back in my day.
If you've got three minutes, and want to go visit a place in my head brought on by a song that was big before I could walk, here's a little karaoke Harmony:
And if that came off as depressing, here's rarity from 1984 that I enjoyed too much for it to last on radio, Who Wears These Shoes:
Last weekend we were down to movies we weren't hopping to see. What Happens In Vegas, for instance, wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, mainly because the side characters were good and the wedding bit in the credits was freakin' hilarious, but as you already know I have a thing for movie inebriation.
The movie was really short, though, so we caught the end of The Dead Girl, which as you might imagine by the title is not at all the type of movie that leaves you happy. There's a character in it that sent me totally frikkin' nuts, though, and dammit I'm telling you all know if you all ever thought I was serial killin', don't burn the evidence for me and let me go on doing it because...okay, I'd probably just be a serial killer of crappy people like how that Dexter guy kills killers and stuff, but still. Damn. Bad enough Mary Beth Hurt's character covers up a crime but then she goes and uncovers her boobies, right there, like, BOOM. Hello.
And then we finally watched Atonement. Oh my god. It's a good movie and all, but...oh my god. It's like the other extreme, don't be being a little bitch to nice men, kids. Not cool.
During the week, I got it into my head to use the gutter rake to take care of the leaves I saw poking out of the top of my house. Two hours later I was covered in the most un-leafy smell and there was wet stuff running down my back. Usually I don't see the point in washing up because it's not like I'm ever washing anything off, but this particular day I was never so glad I bought new $2 Head & Shoulders knock off ever, and that counts every time I get the weird blistering flare-ups.
The very next day, the guy we've been trying to get to come take the gutter off the porch roof because it rotted the portion of wood it was screwed into wrong six years ago (ah, my legacy) showed up, looked at the gutter, determined that indeed it needs help...and the gutters need cleaning, so they'll do that when they come to do the gutter. I regret nothing, there were so many leaves in the gutter the day before that the squirrels could walk along the surface and be totally visible, no fluffy tails bouncing along, no, entire squirrel visibility. So instead of finishing my gutter-cleaning, I cut down 33 gallons' worth of thorny noxious toxic weed vine because no one else is going to come along and offer to do it.
I thought I'd found a place to procure more skill and experience points but the entire website seemed to get hacked and go under within four days of me being picked up. Recall, if you will, how I've killed my favorite TV shows and have a tendency to bring layoffs and sometimes format changes to radio stations, JUST BY LIKING THEM. <Elton John>You're not lucky knowing me.</Elton John>
It was a busy week. I spelled a lot of words wrong and alienated more people than usual, but I slept at least three hours one of the days and can now see more potential raccoon entryways to the yard than ever before.
This was part of tomorrow's rundown of the week until I realized it sort of rambles into its own life, and hey, day with no post, meet overflow from another post.
On Wednesday, I went about my usual routine lifelike activities until about 9PM, when I was suddenly possessed by a desire to fire up Twitter and post random thoughts about plumbers named Joe. After about 90 minutes of that, I closed Firefox and saw that I'd never finished the dialogue for my comic strip. Nothing else at all got done for those 90 minutes. It was a strange fugue, but I think the me of previous blogs would be happy that it happened, and that it probably will not happen again for at least four more years.
I am on the Twitter, you know. At twitter.com/LyndaN I welcome all followers and in return follow everyone but the Gatorade salesman. I even follow a dude from India who joined Twitter when he got an iPhone and made only four posts, one of which asked me, "u wanna do it?"
I replied to that tweet, I did. I don't think he liked what I said. I've recently started replying to spammers too, if they ask if I want to go on a date, I write back and ask if they want to clean my rain gutters. They never answer, possibly because they think I'm even freakier than they are.
As someone with limited space to begin with, you wouldn't think I'd be eager to go filling up my room with more cute little effigies of pop culture characters. But I'm a girl. And cubeecraft.com has an Indiana Jones! Darth Vader, the TARDIS, presidential candidates, even Domo-Kun, they can come out of my computer and be part of the real world, where real people can see them and I can say, "Er, Domo-Kun, he's a...dude, it's Japanese."
Okay, so maybe it's just another way to invite more questions I can't answer, but they're cute, and if you don't count the cost of ink and paper, they're free! Just think if I'd made my Star Wars Action Figures this way! They'd be 1000x less crappy!
This diversion brought to you by the sad realization that there will probably never be a papercraft horse-headed naked dancing mushroom chef.
I'd been meaning to post a post 100% live, like just write something and stick it up here and go, "BOOM, MY LEAVES STINK!" or some equally dull head-shake-inducing blog where maybe I comment on how the removal of Cymbalta ads from television would make the world less depressing in the five minutes spared, but no.
I just accidentally let a future post slip, and now you see how I abuse the post scheduler. I don't think I've just sat down and posted anything like this in a while. Maybe since I changed my layout, did you all see that? How's that looking? It looks better on Firefox and Google Chrome, I know.
So hey. How's it hanging?
Dancing With The Stars just ended and I have a new strip up, those are the things I enjoy, you want me to start relating how I enjoyed the CBS-FM countdown of 1984 music? Do I have to? Could you not just instantly know I'd be all over that? And it really was 1984, I don't know why they skipped that week on the page. Probably didn't want me linking to it.
I totally caught my hand in a chair the week that countdown was current music, too. My nail eventually came off and everything (during a Miss Marple movie), it was so cool.
Last weekend we watched Blade Runner again, and I don't even need to say why because it's Blade Runner, man. Oh, okay, it was on TV and we couldn't all get it together to watch then so we waited for Saturday and added pretzels. Of course then I had an allergic reaction to something and spent the end of the movie wheezing into my Benadryl. Blade Runner just wouldn't be the same if one of us wasn't sick while watching it, so I gladly accept that role. Now, because I didn't, like, asphyxiate.
Then we played Grand Theft Auto III a lot. One great thing about driving in GTA is that the flickering of late-afternoon sun is very nearly nonexistant, unlike realy life, and holy crap if I ever accidentally drive into a bus you'll know I went out crying some slurred thing about not being able to see.
I have five projects going on that I can't talk about right now if only because they've all blurred into one and I'd only say something like I think I'm listening to paint.
One night Rosemary's Baby was coming on, and I hadn't seen that since the '90s, so I'd forgotten they don't all get their comeuppance. Wow. Heavy. I happened to see on IMDB that a remake is in the works. Why? WHY? WHAT WILL YOU DO TO ITS EYES?! I'm betting CGI. Gotta be better than the lizard baby puppet in V, though...right?
Nan can find winners of movies, though, and this week's late night winner was The Obsession a tale of a guy so sad he begins stalking a 14-year-old ballerina of questionable quality and somehow knows that merely leaving a condom wrapper in the car of his crush's father will set events in motion for him to take over the dancing school and change the ribbon in the now 16-year-old dancer's hair. It's made-for-TV, they can't do anything more pervy than that and scrapbooking. The young dancer, see, she reminds teacher dearest of his dead wife, except that his wife, in flashbacks, does not drop her arms like she's really tired as she's dancing and her expression changes sometimes, so actually I couldn't see the comparison at all, but hey, I'm not a creepy pervert who stabs ballerina boyfriends.
I hacked up a lot of things in my backyard and it made me sad afterwards. I don't like cutting the cherry tree, but as a result it's sort of dying, so I pruned a lot of the lower branches to encourage it to maybe not die. I may have cracked why cutters cut. Then I pruned the Rose of Sharon for the winter. Already. While wearing shorts. Unreal. I love you, but I ain't getting hypothermia for you.
I haven't said anything about what Jon Stewart aptly called the ClusterF#@k to the Poor House, because my if blood boiled any longer about the things that led to and are being done about this financial hot mess, I would be even more dain bramaged than I currently may be.
Also, I don't want to.
I'm very lucky I never had enough money to invest, is all I'm saying.
Okay, I did, that one time, made my $35, and got the hell out of the stock market before the trading place started charging a monthly fee.
I used that $35 on Star Wars action figures, most likely.
I'm also really hoping oil continues to drop. Then I hope roofing becomes free for people who can cook wicked meatballs! That'd be sweet!
It's true I got paid to write this, but having wonky eyes as I do, I've tried some questionable things to reverse the scarring without the use of a time machine and a baseball bat, as I don't have my baseball bat anymore.
I always used to see those pinhole glasses and wonder if they'd help my eyes, because I was once told I had the focusing ability of an 80-year-old and needed to strengthen my eyes.
Now there's an entire website devoted to those very pinhole eyeglasses, and it explains what they are, how they work, and even how they evolved from the slatted wooden spectacles the Eskimos used.
I should repeat the warning on the website that these pinhole glasses should not be worn while driving. I do not want to be the one who told you to go wear some pinholes and then have you crash into me while I'm crying about how the sun is flickering between the buildings and trees that are all out to get me. These glasses are to exercise the muscles of your eyes, they aren't going to cure my kind of crazy what goes on between the eyes and the brain, and for Cyclops' sake if your eyes burn and run and you feel like you've got things in your eye, odds are you have something in your eye and need an eye doctor to fix that, so see an eye doctor if your eyesight suddenly changes. Then you can try strengthening your eyes. Don't be like, "Oh hey I've got the focusing ability of an 80-year-old and stabbing pains, maybe I'll try this." No, try these only after you know your eyes are okay. Okay?
If you've been curious about those strange glasses and feel like trying them out, they're available with free shipping and a 100% satisfaction guarantee at http://www.pinhole-glasses-direct.com/. There's also carry an acupuncture eyemask that by name alone makes me want to freak out my aunt. But I will not. At least until she's right in front of me, then I'll be all, "AGH, NEEDLES! THERE REALLY ARE NEEDLES!"
(There aren't really needles, I'm kidding with you, it's a very proper-looking massager.)
Mum went for her six-month follow up on her leg today, and not only has the vascular clinic changed building, but they no longer take Aetna and they happened to be out of Unna boots, the last of which is fine by Mum as she only needs to keep wearing her support sock and unless her leg opens up again she never has to see any of the doctors or nurses there ever again.
Okay, that part sucked. They're good people and I'm grateful to every single one of them. They all remembered her, which never fails to shock me as I can't remember to put on more clothes when it's colder weather and less clothes when it's hot. I get nervous around hospitals, I never expect to make it out without being tackled by orderlies.
Proving that I once was even more horrendously melodramatic and wordy, I will now post as near a replica as my blog allows of something that was originally posted on my website in 1998. Yes, ten years ago. A decade. No, I can't believe it either. It involves something that took place a year earlier, and has tiny pictures with Comics Sans MS captions that scream "This was my first web page!"
I did not edit any of what follows, so the abuse of the word ironic and grammar in general remains as it was back then. I'd only be pissed at myself if I caught myself correcting things, anyway, as I was apparently quite obnoxious.
But it happened, and if you're very good and scroll all the way to the bottom, maybe there's an update that doesn't involve obscure Sailor Moon R references.
The Tale of Ms. Mulberry
Ralph, Michael and Louie from Arbor Tree Service arrived at 9:45am on October 4th, 1997. (Hitchhiker's day! How ironic...) and by 6:10 on 10/6 it was all over.
The 60-ish year old Female Red Mulberry tree that stood in the yard as long as I've been here is gone.
Her roots are still here, however, so you never know, maybe she'll decide to grow again. She's done it before.
When we moved here in October of 1981, the beautiful Mulberry tree that grew in the middle of the yard had two leaders, a straight-ish piece that grew on the right side, and a slanted half to the left. In the middle was a stump from where a third limb must have been cut.
We enjoyed sitting Bibi the cat (a.k.a. Tookie) up on the flat stump for pictures, never really noticing that the back had an indentation from the stump down to the ground.
Every Winter I would marvel at how the snow would catch on the bark of the trees, forming little snow-leaves at the ends of the branches until the wind would blow them away.
After a few years, the stump started to lose it's outer bark, and so did the indentation in the back. I would sit out on my swing some nights transfixed by the slugs that would make their way around the base of the tree.
I was about ten, so that would fascinate me, you know. I was easily entertained, and still am, apparently.
In April of 1987, my old T-Gym (are all of those as awful as mine was?) sat under the Mulberry and Cherry trees. This one day in particular I was in the yard, on my swing, listening to my radio (with headphones. I'm courteous, if a bit deaf now), and noticed that a tree on Morgan, the block behind us, was being what I'd later find out was called "topped". Looked awful, anyway. Seemed a shame for such a nice tree. Eric Clapton's "It's In The Way That You Use It" was on at one point, I clearly remember.
Once, my grandfather, Savio, Poppy, or Pa, as I usually called him, was sitting in the yard and he noticed that he could see sunlight through the base of the tree, in the middle, where the stump was.
On closer inspection, and it didn't really have to be that close, we saw that the tree was splitting down the middle, and that the left side that was off-kilter already, was in danger of falling on our shed (which thinking back wouldn't have been so bad) and the swing that my Mum had just built a year before.
Not only that, but it could have easily flattened anyone that had the dumb luck to be standing near it if and when it decided to go.
So Mum called Arbor Tree Service. They came on July 14th to cut the left side of the Mulberry tree (they told us it was a Mulberry, up until then we didn't know) and prune the Cherry tree next to it a bit.
I wore this black summer thing that anyone that knows me well knows, in mourning for the half of the tree that was to be cut off.
I watched the entire thing from my window, with Simon the cat and Bobby the dog next to me, very anxious about the men that were in their yard, climbing their tree.
When it was done, I went out to look at the new stump. It had that smell that lumber departments have, I kinda liked it...
I noticed these little bugs walking all over the stump, and not knowing then what I do now, didn't recognize them as carpenter ants.
Two years later, the tree sprouted new growth where it had been cut.
I claimed the "new half", pruning it and making it look quite spiffy. Not an easy thing to do with a bowsaw--Red Mulberry happens to be one of the hardest woods, you know.
This Spring, June 2nd, 1997, to be exact (the chronologer strikes again!) After recovering from my hibernation, I took to the yard with my Garden Claw and pruners to see what needed to be done.
The back of the Mulberry tree was entirely split, and now you could see sunlight through the whole thing. There were mushroom-ish things growing on the base, and there were discolored patches on the bark here and there.
Panicing, as I do so well, we called four or five tree services (you'd be amazed how many tree services are based in City Island) and the overall conclusion was that Ms. Mulberry wouldn't last another year.
After an interesting few months of trying to track down the man who was supposed to do the job, we decided to call Arbor again. We knew them, we liked them, and at least we knew that they were capable of handling chainsaws.
Each time the day of doom would near, I'd go out in the yard, apologize to "Mully" and ask it to grow back and see us some time.
After ten times, I figured we were all ready for it. For some reason the Ben Folds Five song "Stephen's Last Night In Town" summed it all up for me. That and "Tubthumping" from Chumbawumba, but that's another story.
Ralph, Michael and Louie from Arbor Tree Service arrived at 9:45am on October 4th, 1997.
It took two days of work, Saturday and Monday, to do it.
"My half" of the tree, the new growth from '89, went first.
Three cuts and it was down.
As they worked on the tree, one man climbing and cutting, the other two hauling the cuttings out to the chipper and their truck, my radio, which is now tuned to WFUV for all eternity, began playing, of all things...bagpipes...
They later played Loreena McKenitt's new song about tree worshipping, "The Mummer's Dance".
I watched the entire thing from my window, with Simon the cat and Holly the dog next to me now, Holly very anxious about the men that were in the yard, climbing Frankie Squirrel's tree.
Simon had seen it before; he stretched out on his pillow that I keep on my stereo for him.
I wore this black summer thing that anyone that knows me well knows (I've been wearing it for years now), in mourning for the rest of the tree. When it got colder I put on my black Steinwurtzel shirt. What ever happened to Steinwurtzel? What ever happened to the pants that went with the shirt...?
So the man cut the tree, an amazing thing to see, really. I have the entire thing on tape. If I could put an animated character in the corner singing tuneless songs I could sell it as a kids guide to the logging industry, maybe.
Ocassionally people on Morgan would walk by and watch the tree being cut down. I'm sure a lot of lot of them thought that it was a shame to cut down such a pretty tree. It was.
As the sawdust from above fell, it caught in the bark of the tree, just as the snow did every Winter. The gorgeous shiny green leaves fell, attached to bits of perfect, if slightly petrified bark.
Watching it, I wondered when the rot would kick in.
Four feet from the ground, the bark began to disintegrate and they actually had to use an axe at one point to split the piece that was cut from both sides towards the middle.
It's strange that something could be so rotted on one side and healthy on the other. Or rather, completely rotted with bits of health here and there.
The first night the bulk of the tree was down -- Saturday -- Simon and Holly were enthralled by the fact that they could now sit on the parts of the tree that used to be at least 30 feet in the air.
I looked up and saw constellations I had never seen. The clouds at sunset were amazing enough, but to see the Swan? Wow.
As I sat on the swing that my Mum made for me in 1988, listening to my headphone radio, watching to make sure Simon and Holly didn't squash themselves under a log, marvelling at the new constellations, and the lack of slugs, Eric Clapton came on the radio.
Ralph said, when it was all done on Monday, that we had done the right thing and that even he couldn't have guessed how bad it really was.
Almost a month later, what remained of the stump has dissolved into mulch, abandoned by the carpenter ants for the softer, sweeter wood of our Cherry Tree, I'm sure.
We brought some of the Euonymous hedges back (they used to be in the back, then we moved them to the front, now they've come home!) and placed a bench in front of it to keep ourselves from breaking something by tripping on it.
I'm still waiting to see if anything survives, to sprout a new growth that I can sit Simon in for photo ops.
Of course, being the Sailor Moon freak that I am, I would. :)
Now playing on my radio: The Mummer's Dance
Ah, Miss Mulberry, ye were a fine tree. A good tree. A strong tree.
And anyone out there that needs tree service and lives nearby, call Arbor Tree Service. They rule.
Update - March 1998
Update: March 1998 -- Who'd have thunk Loreena McKennit would get so popular? :)
Update - April 1998
I interrupt my already long story to cut to the happy ending:
The other day, after all the rain we had (which was before all the rain we're getting now), I was, well... I admit it. Picking up Holly's poopy. I happened to be near Mully's stump.
There were little buds on this twig like thing, sticking out of the front.
I hadn't made it official until now because I wanted to see what it was, it might have just been something the ants had grafted into the tree, you never know with them, amazing gardeners, they are.
Anyway...
Ms. Mulberry has returned.
If this was a Sailor Moon episode, I'd be floating off right now with my blue and pink haired friends to make a new start, I'm so happy.
Instead, I'm waiting to get a really good picture... and guarding that twig.
During a rather nasty storm, the bit that was growing out of the stump blew over. It was incredibly depressing but I kept a wand-length branch to er...hide on my desk so Mum doesn't think bugs will kill us in our sleep.
Update - August 2004
In 2003, when my Ninjas were wee lads, I was out mowing when I spotted familiar leaves. It was maybe not entirely unbelievable. A separate tree, with its own roots, that would be able to grow...well, wherever I moved it to because it was growing too close to the house.
If you click the picture to check out the full size, in the upper-left corner, you see the young twig my mother kept asking me about. "No, it's not a tree," I assured her...that worked for a while.
Update - October 2008
Nearly twenty years since the original mulberry tree was cut in half, and eleven years after the rest was cut down, "Junior" has grown to about ten feet, and I've been keeping it pruned. Mulberries, I've discovered through the other five that have cropped up in the lawn, are easy to dwarf. But this one, this one that appeared the year we brought the Ninja Twins home, this one I let reach the sky.
All there really is to add to this, aside from HOLY HELL, I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU READ THIS WHOLE THING, is that on YouTube I found the explanation for all the Sailor Moon tree references. It's been too long since I got to see Sailor Moon, but that's another tale, for another time.
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The point, I think, is never to give up because there may be another chance.
Looks like telly's pulling out all the horror a record five weeks before Halloween! It probably gives away what hour I was up writing if I say I saw a Tales From The Darkside with a very young Christian Slater in it. I think we've seen just about every episode of that show, but I'd forgotten this one, so it was fun to see.
Last weekend Sci-Fi played one called Tale of the Mummy, which was obviously an early movie for Gerard Butler and an in-between other films job for Christopher Lee, because although the hype said they're the stars, they are not. The star is apparently a swirling bunch of evil bandages, that pulls entire people into toilets and does really rude things to guide dogs.
Then we watched 30 Days of Night, which is about vampires in Alaska. Not hot vampires you'd like to follow to a jazz club, mind you, as you would not make it out of the driveway. As a pick-the-cast-off horror movie it's okay, but if you happen to like Alaskan Huskies in an unstabbed state, be warned that the beginning is not cool. No one warned me.
From Lifetime came the cautionary tale The Ticket, which proves you shouldn't ask anyone for their airplanes if you've won $23 million dollars, because for some reason money makes people utter gits to each other everyone only ends up being shot at, frozen, and set on fire. And I thought the news was mad.
The best movie we saw this week, though, was a rather popular flick over the summer called Iron Man. HOLY CRAP IRON MAN IS FANTASTIC!
Notice I'm totally focusing on the movies again because my personal life is a twisted wreckage of mismanagement. The rain loosened up the decorative front wall outside of my house and not for anything, there is no style called, "Crack house chic," so as in most Octobers in years ending in 8, I'll be bringing amusing tales of concrete next week.
