Spooky November

 

In November of 1697, two glowing wheels are seen in the skies over Hamburg, Germany.

 

In November of 1896, a wave of mysterious “airship” sightings wash over 19 western US states, the first originating in Sacramento, California.

 

Also, one Colonel Shaw and his companions ae approached by “strange beings” who attempt to abscond with them in an awaiting airship.

 

In November of 1930, the mass disappearance of the inhabitants of the Inuit village of Angikuni is discovered.

 

In November of 1944, military brass coin the term “foo fighters” to describe otherworldly glowing orbs which closely followed and often dog-fought Allied fighters over Europe.

 

Four years later, in November of 1948, the “green fireball” phenomena, observed by hundreds of civilians and scientists, spreads throughout the American southwest, particularly Albuquerque, New Mexico.

 

In November of 1952, prophet or huckster George Adamski encounters his first Venusian, or so he claims.

 

A year later, in November of 1953, Air Force pilot Felix Moncla dies in a crash flying after what he believes to be a UFO.

 

For three straight days in November of 1957, observers, including police officers, track and chase cigar- and egg-shaped objects in the sky, from Levelland, Texas to White Sands, New Mexico, objects which cause vehicles on the ground to stall.

 

In November of 1961, Michael Rockefeller, heir to the vast Rockefeller fortune, vanishes in New Guinea, perhaps a victim to cannibalistic tribes he was studying in the region or perhaps in the crocodile-infested waters.

 

In November of 1965, over the long night of the 9th to the 10th¸ the “Great Blackout” blankets the vast majority of the United States.

 

A year later, in November of 1966, the “Mothman” of West Virginia first shows up in the town of Point Pleasant. In November of 1967, four individuals claim to spot the winged otherworldly creature.

 

In November of 1975, Travis Walton is abducted by a UFO within Sitgreaves National Forst in eastern Arizona and “returns” after six days missing.

 

In November of 1986, passengers and pilots of Japan Air Lines Flight 1628 sight and track a huge UFO “the size of an aircraft carrier.” Radar hits from the ground lend credence to the fact that something in addition to the aircraft was up there.

 

In November of 1989, a wave of triangular UFO sightings create havoc in Belgium, lasting off and on until 1991. When photographed, and photographed by many, only blurs show up on film.

 

In November of 2004, US Navy aircraft from the USS carrier Nimitz encounter the “tic tac” UFO – excuse me, the term now is UAP – off the coast of Florida.

 

Two years later, in November of 2006, United Airlines personnel at Chicago O’Hare Airport are stunned to watch a disc-shaped object shoot straight up off the tarmac, cutting a hole in the overhead cloud cover.

 

That’s just a sampling. Man, what a spooky month November is!

 

Literary Connection to Old Celebrity

 

I discovered another connection I have with a celebrity from days of old. Much like that time I stumbled over Lee Harvey Oswald’s library take-out online. I find myself endlessly fascinated with what other people read. Whenever someone’s interviewed on teevee with a bookshelf behind him, or when I see a row of books in the background in a movie scene, I’m always dying to see the names scrawled on the spines of those out-of-focus books.

 

Anyway, I’m reading a goofy little book on UFO phenomena. It hearkens back to the spooky days of my youth. A dose of nostalgia to wipe away the stresses of the day. In this book it’s stated that comedian Jackie Gleason was a huge UFO buff. He had a house built in upstate New York shaped like a flying saucer. Golfing buddy Richard Nixon allegedly showed the girthy comic alien bodies at an air force base late one drunken night. Along with an interest with the paranormal and the occult, he had over 1,400 books in his collection at the time of his death in 1987. The collection was then donated to a local college, and I found a link to it online.

 

Jackie Gleason was most famously known as Ralph Kramden on The Honeymooners as well as the sheriff in Smokey and the Bandit with Burt Reynolds. Smokey was a staple of my youth, and the Honeymooners was a staple at college, where my roommates and I, usually drunk but not always so, would watch the show late at night before bed. Occasionally a little wacky weed would be involved and we’d turn off the sound and ad-lib the dialogue. Gleason was one of my grandfather’s favorite comics, too.  He was the Jim Carrey or Will Ferrell of the 1950s, in a somewhat weak but fair analogy.

 

So what did Jackie Gleason read that I, Hopper, also put away? Out of 1,437 books, we have 15 specifically in common:

 

The UFO Experience, by Dr. J. Allen Hynek

Flying Saucers, by Carl Jung

Invisible Residents and Uninvited Visitors, by Ivan Sanderson

Communion, by Whitley Strieber

The Dragons of Eden, by Carl Sagan

The Varieties of Religious Experience, by William James

Flying Saucers Here and Now, by Frank Edwards

The Bermuda Triangle, by Charles Berlitz

The Doors of Perception, by Aldous Huxley

Meetings with Remarkable Men, by Gurdjieff

Autobiography of a Yoga, by Paramahansa Yogananda

Zen in the Art of Archery, by Eugen Herrigal

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, by Friedrich Nietzsche (!)

and

No One Here Gets Out Alive, by Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman, the first biography of Door’s lead singer Jim Morrison (!!!)

 

Additionally, Gleason had a book of Nostradamus prophecies (similar to a giant tome my father-in-law gave me one Christmas), a book on the philosophical treatises of Leibniz (I still have Monadology on the shelves), and a book titled The Evolution of Physics, by Albert Einstein (!).

 

What lessons can be drawn, other than Jackie Gleason and Hopper have literary tastes often quite far from the mainstream road?

 

Well, as one should never judge a book by its cover, one should never judge a reader by his collection. Or maybe better, one never knows another truly until he sees what books are on the other’s shelf.

 

Riddle of the Year

Q: What do you get when you cross an insomniac, an unwilling agnostic, and a dyslexic?

A: Somebody who stays up all night torturing himself mentally over the question of whether or not there’s a dog.

[taken from a passage in the late-great David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, meta-novel extraordinaire, member of Hopper’s bucket list, page 41]

People I Never Want Calling Me "Bro"

My children:

“Bro, can I have a play date with Amanda?”

My mom:

“Hi, bro, just want to know if your family is still coming for Thanksgiving.”

My pastor:

“To get to heaven, bro, you must take up your cross and follow Him.”

My vet:

“Sorry, bro, it might be best to euthanize your daughter’s hamster.”

My realtor:

“Bro, we can easily get $400k for your home!”

My banker:

“Now is the most opportune time to refinance, bro.”

My doctor:

“Bro, it’s cancer.”

And don’t get me started on “brah” …

Weirdest of Horrible Dreams

Last night I dreamt something I think you’d agree is truly weird.

… and horrible …

It started out innocently enough.

Let this song from your childhood run through your mind:

Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale

A tale of a fateful trip …

That’s right: Gilligan’s Island.

I was on the island with Gilligan, Skipper, the Professor, Mary Anne, Ginger, and Mr. and Mrs. Howell.

But there was something else on the island …

Ready?

…

Drum roll

…

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

….

A Xenomorph.

Yep. A Xenomorph, or, as is known to the non-nerd populace, an alien. From Alien. Or Aliens. Or Alien3, Alien Resurrection, Alien vs. Predator, Alien vs. Predator: Requiem, and/or Alien Covenant.

There’s an alien on Gilligan’s island, and it’s making its way one-by-one through those seven stranded castaways – eight, counting me.

Blood. Guts. Screams. Jump scares. Ineffective coconut guns. Bamboo barriers basically bad at blasting these baneful beasts at bay. A chestburster claims curious young Willy Gilligan. Skipper skewered by those second set of slimy jaws. Professor drowning in hubris to “communicate with these wondrous creatures” drowns in blood. The Howells attempting to escape in a raft – only to discover said raft harboring a maternity ward for those alien eggs o’trembling ….

So, that was my nightmare last night.

Good Lord, can’t my brain just disconnect for a couple of hours a year???

Inquiring Minds Want to Know

What’s on deck, Hopper?

Well, I try to post something every other day or so, but usually I’m not successful. It’s mostly due to busy-ness sapping energy. Not physical energy, but mental energy. Not proud of it, but since this blog generates no income whatsoever to me, I have to focus my batteries on things that do. The day job, the upcoming seasonal night job, and the little ones, which I watch because the wife does the NYC / travel thing on her path to vice-presidency in her company.

The big thing, of course, was Halloween. I did not dress up, though a bunch of people at my work did. The 65-year-old guy in the office across the hall from mine dressed as Skeletor. I got to work early so I could enjoy an extended lunch hour watching Patch at her grammar school parade. The second-to-last parade, as she’s a third through fourth grade already. Then I got out early to pick up some pizzas, wolf them down with the girls and their friends at our house, and then do four hours of trick or treating in two separate towns!

Truth be told, I only helped chaperone for the first three hours. The bloody stumps previously called my feet sidelined me for the rest of the night, so the wife volunteered for the final run in the near-darkness of the eight o’clock hour. I soaked my carcass in a hot bath and finished the insanely odd duck A Voyage to Arcturus. A delicious and extended review of the 1920 cult novel is anticipated sometime this weekend.

Yesterday I spent 90 minutes at the town high school for their Open House. Little One will be, yes, hard to fathom, a high school student in ten months. Where did that little thing whose diaper I changed a few hundred times, who looked up to me from three feet away, holding her hand upwards, as we walked into the grocery store, who sat on the couch eating apple sauce and raisins, watching cartoons with me before afternoon kindergarten, where did she go? Oh well, that’s all for another post, if I have the fortitude …

Anyway, we’re in good hands with my town’s school and the people who run it. It’s a very good school system and she’ll have a great chance to get into the college of her choice, if that’s her path. Half the night was devoted to an overnight trip the 8th-grade class is taking to Washington DC in May. About the only disconcerting thing I spotted was during the high school principal’s slideshow. On a list of all the clubs offered was the inevitable LBGQT-alphabet nonsense. It was depressing; I guess I can’t shield Little One from the noise out there anymore. (Not that she really needs me to.)

Today I left work early to get Patch to girl scouts, pick up Little One after theater club (she paints sets), hit the sports store to get Patch sized for basketball uniforms, get us all a bite to eat, then drive Patch to basketball practice followed by travel soccer practice. Man, it gets exhausting.

Also failed an incredibly difficult tax test a few night’s back. The IRS requires us return preparers to complete 18 hours of training every year before November 30 – 13 hours federal tax topics, 3 hours tax update, and 2 hours ethics. Training can be in a class, with a virtual instructor, or online. I prefer the online ones, because I can stop them whenever I want and I can pause them to take notes. This class in question was my second-to-last, and was probably more advanced for me in my current spot in the food chain. I was shocked to fail with a 63. So the next day I printed out my notes, studied for 45 minutes with Bach’s Goldberg Variations in the ear buds, and retook the test. I aced it, I am proud to say. (Little One, if you’re reading this, trade in the Ed Sheeran for Bach when you study – trust me and an army of neuroscientists – it works!)

So, as an answer to the title question, I dunno. Other than that extended book review of the Lindsay book, I’m not sure what’ll be upcoming here.

But I’ll think of something …

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

Some Halloween pics –

Little One, age 13, as a black cat

Patch, age 9, as an old grandma

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

Some personal weirdities reposted from 2010 –

Did I ever see a ghost?

No. But I had a friend who had a friend who lived with a friendly one.

Did I ever see anything inexplicable?

Well, I saw some strange lights in the sky when I was twelve years old. Once I saw Bigfoot walk past my window and completely froze up, overdosing on adrenaline. But seconds later I realized it was only my mother taking out the trash.

Did I ever hear anything unexplainable?

Another time, laying in the dark of my room, pretending to be asleep, I heard one of my dresser drawers being pulled out. A few times there were frightening night-time bangings on the window of the small bedroom me and my brother shared. But that turned out to only be my father sadistically pretending to be Santa checking up on us.

Any recurring weirdities?

Yes. I usually wake up within a few minutes of 3:15 am every night. Remember The Amityville Horror? George Lutz would always wake up at that time in the morning to go outside to check the boathouse. There’s tradition (or urban myth) that 3 am is the devil’s hour, being completely opposite of the time of the day Christ was crucified, redeeming us all. How that quarter-past-the-hour came to be, I don’t know. But I’ll usually wake up between 3:10 and 3:20 every night. Must have something to do with those 90-minute REM cycles.

Did I ever feel anything otherworldly?

Yes. This one’s serious. One night I was sleeping downstairs on the couch (my pregnant wife commandeered the upstairs bed) and I woke at 3:15 (natch). I went to the bathroom but as I rounded the bend I sensed something … not exactly demonic, not exactly a presence, even … but something in the corner of my children’s playroom. Hard to put into words, but I do believe I felt something that night. Haven’t since, which is a good sign. Possibly I was still partially asleep.

What were some of the Halloween urban legends of my youth?

We lived a block away from “the Woods”. There were lots of strange, wonderful, and spooky things in those woods. I can immediately recall a story – don’t know if there’s any truth in it – that circulated a lot when I was in grammar school. Seems there was this big cardboard box found in the woods, and whaddya think was in it? … Body parts! Dismembered limbs and such, part of a torso … but no head! I heard that delightful tale every year, year after year, more so during late October.

Any brushes with disaster?

On vacation with the family at Lake George, li’l ol’ ten-year-old me was playing on the dock by the boathouse. Oh look! I remember thinking, someone’s left a big black hairy rubber spider right there on the deck! I think I’ll go over, reach down and pick it up! Ahhhhh! It moves! … I’ve been scarred ever since.

Any encounters with bats?

No.

Black cats?

I like cats.

Witches?

Maybe. I think, based on hints dropped over a two-year period, that mother of one of my ex-girlfriends may have been a witch. I may have been under a spell for a four-year period, too, but that’s pure speculation.

The Patterson Gimlin Filn

50 years ago today, Roger Patterson filmed a Sasquatch meandering through a dried river bed in Bluff Creek, California.

Patterson, who was to die of cancer five years after the encounter, was an avid Bigfoot buff who’d regularly go out hunting for the giant cryptid, after first reading about it in 1959. He even published a short book of his sasquatchian musings in 1966.

On Friday, October 20, 1967, around 1:30 in the afternoon, Patterson and his friend, Bob Gimlin, on horseback, rounded a bend in a dried creek marked by a large overturned tree. Patterson’s horse spooked and nearly threw him. He got off, steadied the animal, and began filming a large, hairy, upright creature approximately 25 feet away, who seems itself to get spooked and bustle away.

The film in its entirety lasts 59.5 seconds.

Myself, I probably first saw this clip on one of the Leonard Nimoy-narrated In Search Of episodes in the late 70s. That launched a pre-adolescent fascination resulting in many hours studying Bigfoot books in an untraveled nook at the library where my mom worked. Though lost to my memory, I must have easily devoured ten or twelve books of varying degrees of difficulty and seriousness on the famously shy hominid. To this day, when in the grip of insomnia, I’ll creep down to the laptop at the writer’s desk in the basement, throw on the headphones, and watch endless Bigfoot videos and documentaries, everything from obvious hoaxes to that greatest documentary of all time, another Nimoy-narrated Sasquatch bio by Ancient Mysteries.

Now – does Hopper believe in Sasquatch?

Uh, dunno. Normally, I’d shout emphatically “No!” Despite a fascination with all things paranormal, cryptozoological, and downright weird, a fascination spawning in part from the countless hours of enjoyment reading and watching science fiction in my childhood, I am at heart a pragmatist. UFOs do not travel here from other galaxies; the Greys do not abduct campers and single moms in trailer parks. Hundreds of eight-foot-tall, 500-pount hairy man-apes do not inhabit the forests of the continental United States.

And yet … I recall reading about how the existence of the African gorilla 150 years ago was roundly mocked and belittled until, uh, a gorilla was actually captured (probably killed). I guess I’m saying Bigfoot’s existence is plausible, though unlikely. Maybe a 5 percent chance of actually being an actual being, were I a betting man.

A common rebuttal to the Sasquatch question is, why haven’t any bones been discovered? Then I read and hear hunters talk and say things like, bears exist, but we don’t find bear bones out on the trail. Dying animals hide, and then other animals dismember and ultimately digest the body.

Then again, I’ve seen plenty of photos and videos of bears.

So, I don’t know. I’d like to think Bigfoot exists. I even thought I saw one, for a split second, peripherally from my ground-level bedroom window as a boy. Turned out just to be my mother, taking out the trash.

I’ve tried to get my girls interested in the creature, if only for the campy, creepy, “what’s that staring at us just beyond the treeline?” effect, but no dice. They ain’t buying it. Perhaps if they were boys, I don’t know. My oldest likes watching the occasional Finding Bigfoot, but only to make fun of the quartet of nerds on the show endlessly not finding Bigfoot and using the cringe-worthy word “squatchy” whenever possible.

Do I think the Patterson film is legit? That the creature filmed is really a Sasquatch, and not some dude in a Hollywood special effects costume? Again, probably not. Breathless affirmations that the suit is lifelike, that “muscles can be seen undulating beneath the fur,” that it’s too realistic to be faked, don’t convince me. One thing, though, does: the fact that when the creature turns to look back at the human intruders, it throws its shoulder and arm back too. This is what gorillas do, because, unlike man, their chins do not rise above their shoulders, and to look back they have to move their entire body 45-90 degrees to one side. Would amateur hoaxers realize that?

So … mostly I know, but there’s a tiny, childlike part that still says “I dunno.”

Creepy, regardless.

Invasion of the Turkeys

No, this is not a post related to today’s date.

This happened a half-hour ago, as me and Patch arrived back home after some errands.

Walking out of my across-the-street neighbor’s backyard, marching in single file, one by one, across the street and into my adjacent neighbor’s property, a platoon of ten turkeys.

This, in my suburban town, not a hundred yards from one of the nation’s busiest highways.

Nonchalant and defiant, they strolled past me, the little one, and a third neighbor, also recording the event.

Led and flanked by massive toms, the squadron held four or five medium sized birds and a trio of younglings. And those big males were … big. Three feet tall and must’ve weighed forty or fifty pounds. Or am I exaggerating? I honestly did not want to get too close. I thought they could fly away with Patch in their talons.

Oh, and do turkeys fly?

Anyway, after ten minutes they disappeared, on a mission known only to them and Turkey High Command. I pray that the invasion is thwarted before real damage is done.

And how do I know that an invasion is underway?

Because I nearly ran down two of them three or four days ago, up the road, on my way to work. Advance scouting patrol. They sauntered out in front of my car, blissfully unaware of the danger (which makes them the most feared of nature’s warriors), causing me to nearly swerve into oncoming traffic to avoid a premature Thanksgiving dinner.

The invasion has commenced!

Something Disconcerting ...

... about a low-flying helicopter. Especially one that’s flying low right above your head.

Yesterday I was driving home from work in the early twilight hours, zigzagging along a winding road bordering a stream twenty feet below. I had just left an affluent town and was cruising toward my home town in moderate traffic, when an odd noise outside the car caught my attention. I switched off the radio and it flooded the cab of my SUV.

whap-whap-whap-whap-whap-whap-whap-whap

Then it got real loud. Oncoming cars slowed down. I slowed down, not realizing a hundred percent what was going on. I leaned against the driver’s side window and looked up, nearly veering off the road into the guardrail above the stream. A massive black body hovered right above me, maybe twenty-five or fifty feet straight up.

Except it wasn’t black. I kept darting my eyes back to the road ahead as I slowed, along with everyone else, and alternated windows I peered out of. It was dark green, like an olive green, with a red cross on a white field on its bottom. It swerved around, out over the water, then came back over the road. I lost sight of it but still heard it, then caught it in my rear-view mirror. I rounded a turn and lost sight of it again, but the sound of the rotating blades got louder.

What is going on? Occasionally we see news helicopters overhead if there is an accident on the local highway, but they tend to stay high up and stationary. This looked like a rescue operation in progress.

I imagined myself being hunted in the woods by one of these things. Scary, and exhilarating. After a minute or two of the entire encounter passed, I made a left at a major intersection and was headed up a steep hill. I lost sight of it in the rear view.

I’ll check the local papers over the next couple of days, and if I find anything of note, I’ll post it here as a follow-up.

I got Patch from aftercare, dropped her off at home (my wife had an office day), and drove into town to get a bite to eat. Still thinking of that strange helicopter I caught peripheral motion from the left side as I pulled up to a stop sign.

It was a hawk, carrying off a squirrel.

... disconcerting ...

Note: Everything in this post actually happened, exactly as written. Even the hawk / squirrel.

I am the Only One Who Found This Funny

Though, in all fairness, I only saw it this morning with a fully-dressed-and-prepped-for-school-at-six-forty-five-a.-m. Patch. The Amazing World of Gumball is one of her top-five favorite cartoons, but all she did was look quite askance at me as I doubled and tripled over in laughter.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Yep, that’s us down at the lake, in an on-the-spot sketch done by Little One. Mrs. Hopper’s grilling up them Oscar Meyers, Patch (now a boy, I see) eagerly awaits my attention to show off her – uh, his – latest wheelie or bunny hop trick. Me, I got the outboard over my knee ready to change some plugs or something, and quench my hunger with some Wheaties. Later, as a family, we’ll shuttlecock the badminton, chip some golf balls, and then, I guess, mow the lawn by the dock.

All things considered, an awesome vacation!

The Walking Shadow

Tomorrow will be my first day at the new job, the first real job I’ve worked at in a year. So today, naturally, I had to watch both girls, at home since school’s inexplicably closed the day after the Memorial Day holiday (they’ve actually had five days off in a row now). Since it’s my final day as Official Caretaker, we did a lot of things: went out for a long walk in the morning before the heat rose too oppressive; ran errands, such as a sidetrips to Five Below and the pet store for hamster bedding; watched a cool movie during the afternoon heat spike while eating sandwiches and chips; went to the park so they could bang on the monkey bars and I could walk the paths in meditative silence, reflecting on this crazy past year.

It was during my walk that I saw the walking shadow.

The path winds around a large pond, perhaps twice the size of a football field, in the geometric center of my town. Meandering through canopies of trees and vines, the path hugs the “coastline”, with the fenced-in backyards of our more expensive homes the path’s other border. Every thirty, forty, fifty feet is a small dock; not large enough to launch a boat (there are no boats on the pond), but more for fishermen and bird watcher types. I found a more secluded one, and stepped out to the edge and rested against the sturdy wood beams.

The book in my hand was one on Shakespeare. Leafing through the pages, I settled on a short excerpt from Macbeth:

Life’s but a walking shadow, … It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

Immediately after I read these lines I glanced out on the pond, and saw the walking shadow. I had the presence of mind to pull out my cell phone and ensnare the otherworldly visitor in a jpeg:

Then the sugary jingle of the ice cream truck wafted through the brush. I knew my girls would be in Pavlovian overdrive. So, eyes flitting between the mocking image in the water and the dancing follicles up and down my arms, I reluctantly stepped off the dock to intercept them. Fortunately my picture of the walking shadow sufficiently creeped out Little One enough to make her – and, subsequently, Patch – forget all about Bomb Pops and Chocolate Eclairs.

Still don’t know what it means. I’m betting, though, it’s actually a good omen.

What a great little happening to end my Year of Exile!

The Club of Exclusionary Über-Nerdness

Similar to that fine line between Genius and Stupidity, the exists an even more rarefied and nebulous border betwixt the Nerdy and the Cool.  Normally, I pride myself on circumscribing and delimiting this boundary, exploring its every nook and cranny, feets planted safely on the side of Cool despite such fearlessly-abandoned flirting with the Nerdy that the most stony heart of the the most snarky of Millennials would shatter like it was basted in liquid Nitrogen. 

That being said, I now am firmly convinced I reside within an exclusive club the paradoxically is increasingly unfashionable the more exclusionary it becomes.  And I may have crossed the border.

Imagine a Venn diagram.  You know, that’s the two big circles that intersect, forming three groups which then have shared and unshared traits. 

Only this Venn diagram features one humongous circle.  A tiny dwarf circle sits adjoins it.  If the first circle is the radius of the solar system, the second would be, oh, say the area of New Jersey.  The space of intersection, the portion where the solar system and New Jersey share the same turf, is about the size of the diameter of a Hydrogen atom.

Got that?  Good.  There will be a surprise quiz on it sometime next week.

What do these circles represent?  What is this intersection, this Club of Exclusionary Über-Nerdness?

 The big circle represents fathers with two daughters.  Maybe there are, conservatively speaking, 1.5 million of us here in the United States.

The second circle represents people who know the lyrics of “The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins,” as performed by Leonard Nimoy.  There are, perhaps, a thousand of us here in the country.

Where they intersect is known as the Region of Fathers Who Have Taught Their Daughters to Sing “The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins” as Performed by Leonard Nimoy.  There are six of us on the planet. 

For the life of me I can’t figure out whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.  All I know is, the girls have fun singing it, though they know it is a thing which should be capital-F Forbidden outside the walls of my home.  If they ever want a social life, that is.

Your homework assignment is to google the above stated lyrics, if you are made of truly metal mettle.  Join the second circle!  And if you have daughters, teach them the ballad and become the seventh member of the Club of Exclusionary Über-Nerdness!

Still Life With Skull

Stared at this painting for three hours today.

In four forty-five minute increments.

Dunno, just kept coming back to it.

At least, it seemed more important than all the credits and debits I was juggling on my schedules at work.

Hmmm.

Perhaps something is trying to tell me something.

Perhaps.

LBJ's Octopus

Found this while bopping about the Internet at lunch time today … a doodle done by Lyndon B. Johnson while a member of Congress.

  

My estimation of the man has just quadrupled …

How could it not?

In Search Of ... Bigfoot?

Woke up at 3:30 this morning and found myself unable to get back to sleep.  So, like I often do, I tiptoe down into my basement writing office, flick on the PC, and hit the usual sites.

Now, call me a nerd if you must, but I prefer to chalk it up to nostalgia.  I always, invariably, sooner or later, during my nocturnal insomniac dazes, hit the plethora of In Search Of videos posted on Youtube.  My subconscious mind must find something very soothing in Leonard Nimoy’s voice, something very comfortable and familiar with the paranormal and histories/mysteries subject matter of the 70s documentary show, because on a good early early morning web surf, I will watch anywhere from two or three to a dozen or more episodes.  Though adult me finds a good deal of the subject matter hokey and implausible (such as Bigfoot), little kid me ate this stuff up nonstop.

Oh, and while I start out doing something productive while half-listening half-watching the videos, like balancing the old check book, I also invariably, sooner or later, open up FreeCell and play about fifty games.

Then I go upstairs when everyone wakes and, if it’s a weekend, sleep for two late-morning hours, like I did this morning.

However, this morning I also watched the Ancient Mysteries show on Bigfoot.  This particular episode truly gives me the chills.  The background music is haunting and hair-raising, subtly eerie and definitely spooky.  I am constantly looking up to see if any red eyes are peering in through the basement windows at me.  Very chilling, but very, very addicting. 

The show originally aired in 1994, I believe, and I remember actually taping it on VHS way back then.  Usually watched it when I stumbled back home late late at night in a drunken stupor.  Seriously.  Though those days are behind me, as well as my VHS recorder, I still watch the Youtube video of that show two or three times a year.

Here it is.  I heartily recommend you bookmark it for the next time you have insomnia.

Hard Times

by Dickens, and Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe, were the two books I picked up at one of the local library during my weekly errands with the girls.  For a grand total of $1.00.  Both will give me somewhere around twenty-four hours of escapist entertainment, of the riches kind: the classics.  Can’t wait to get to them.  Maybe in December.

Three-quarters through with 11/22/63, Stephen King’s take on time-travel meets the Kennedy assassination.  Lots of good, lots of bad.  Can’t wait to write that review.  All the best of King and all the worst, what I enjoyed most and what finally turned me off, are present in this work.  I was a veritable King junkie from 1983 to about 1995 or so.  Since then I’ve read one of his works (Dreamcatcher), and most of that on the cross-country flight to my honeymoon destination in Napa Valley in 2001.

This JFK revisit also made me pick out the Jesse Ventura book on the subject.  Yes, I have no shame.  And, no, I still remain firmly convinced in the Lone Gunman position, thank you Gerald Posner and Vincent Bugliosi.  But Ventura’s bat-sh*t über-conspiratorial position reminds me of my youthful idiot phase in the early-90s when Oliver Stone indoctrinated me into the don’t-trust-anyone-over-30 phase of 60s and 70s idiocy, priming me up for an admittedly creepy yet fascinating dozen book tour of the whole 11/22/63 thing.  And I like nostalgia.

Anyway, busy morning with the girls’ final soccer games of the season in unseasonably cold weather.  Both had losing seasons, both had coaches with a lot of heart.  Now we’re turning the house upside down in a cleaning frenzy, as Little One has two of her friends coming over in two hours for a sleepover.  Welcome to the tween-light zone, Hopper.

Some much-needed relaxation, maybe, possibly, tomorrow, in the afternoon, after I serve at my church at noon.  Possibly.  Maybe.

The Maze

Every October the owners of a house a couple of towns over erect a haunted maze in their backyard.  It’s not-for-profit, just for-fun, and it’s a spooky treat for the little ones as well as for the adults.  They go all out, and it shows, and it’s appreciated. 

We’ve gone three out of the past four years, though I did not go the first year (stayed at home with a still-in-diapers Patch).  This past Saturday, me, the wife, Little One and Patch, as well as our good friends and their children, all stopped by for an hour or so trip through the creepy labyrinth. 

First, as you pull up, I’m always a little leery at the sheer suburbanness of it all.  How do their neighbors not call the police on them?  Saturday at 7 pm must be prime time, because a dozen SUVs crowded the real estate all around the house.  Anyway, we got the little ones out and across the dark street without event.  Then, the fun began.

A large, disembodied hand greets you at the front of the driveway.  Then – and you never quite know where – voices catch your ear and movement catches your eye every couple of feet.  Animatronic witches and zombies move and cackle with glowing eyes.  Freddy Krueger menaced a line of maze-goers from a fir tree next to the garage. 

Then: the maze itself.

From the outside, it looks tiny.  Incredibly tiny.  I’d estimate it at twenty by twenty feet, four hundred square feet inside.  Probably a couple hundred wooden stakes planted every two or three feet held up rows and rows of burlap.  Klieg lights flood the yard with blinding white light, but once inside the maze it gets a bit dark and murky.  In falls past there would be dry-ice smoke, but there wasn’t any this time.  Only twenty-five people at a time were allowed inside; any more, the owner said to us waiting on line to get in, and the slightest scare could cause a “herd stampede through the nearest burlap wall.”

Little One and her girl friend went in ahead of us, to their sheer delight.  Me and the wife, with a nervous but brave Patch sandwiched between us, followed.  Once you went in the labyrinth, you were in a labyrinth.  The corridors were narrow, about two feet across I’d guess.  If my math’s correct that means only a hundred feet of winding path, but the sheer amount of twisting and forking made it feel like it was four or five times as much.  The walls were about seven feet high; you couldn’t see out, and some stretches had a burlap overlap as a ceiling.  Occasionally there’s a door you could push through; these are unmarked.  Sometimes a mirror is hung.  Sometimes a baby or a skull.  There was a “Snake Room” where a dozen rubber snakes adorned the walls; this turned out to be an integral clue to finding your way out.  Then you had to find the “hall of hands,” a ten-foot section where bloodied stumps poked you.  Once you got here, you could almost find your way out.  I got past the Snake Room and the Hall of Hands three times before finding my way out.

Oh, and when the crowd thins, they have a Clown and a Demon sneak about grabbing your legs.  Fortunately, since we had Patch with us, they were not causing mischief this night.

Quickly I got separated from my family.  Kept passing the same people over and over.  Caught up with Little One but found it hard to keep up with her.  Didn’t matter, because she’d get us lost anyway.  Outside the maze stood a deck where the owner’s wife camped out with a bullhorn to help anyone who needed it.  On the deck you could look down into the maze and see everyone scurrying blindly about, like rats in the dark.  My buddy was next to her and, looking down on helpless me, relentlessly mocked my helplessness.  Several times I passed the entrance and thought about leaving that way, but that would be like admitting defeat and opening yourself up to the wholesale mockery of two dozen strangers. 

Finally, after thirty minutes in, I was the last one of our party to part the secret doors and exit the haunted maze on the far side.  Our friends had already left, but my family was still there.  Patch, who started to lose it in the maze (so bad that my wife had to exit via the entrance with her), came up to me and said, “Dad!  I can’t believe you kept going through the wrong door!”

Wait till next year!  I have a secret to find my way out first …