Mysterious, unidentified vintage photos...

Every now and then, I like to peruse old "found" photographs on Flickr. Basically, these are photos of unidentified people that have been found in flea markets, antique stores, eBay auctions, etc. Where the photos came from, and how they came to be in these places, who knows? Anywho, here's the link:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/foundphotos/

I think that I look at these photos for the same reason that some people are drawn to horror films; sometimes you just wanna be creeped out. And, frankly, there's something downright unsettling about abandoned photos of unidentifiable people and places from decades past.

But it's also kind of sad to realize that your own precious family photos could wind up thrown away or abandoned by indifferent relatives who survive you. A captured moment and memory of your life that once meant so much to you becomes stripped of its context and meaning after your death. An unknown face in an unknown place, forever a mystery.

Latest painting...

For some of you (all one or two of my readers--okay, I'm being overly optimistic that there's a second reader), this will be old news, but here 'tis:

The Creepy, Crawly House...

Long, long ago, there was a house called--are you ready for it?--the "Creepy, Crawly House".

But you won't find this house in any Google search. Well, maybe you'll find something matching "creepy crawly house", but it's not the house I'm talking about.

First, let's hop back in time to when I was a wee lad. Yeah, come on, let's hop. I was older than 6, younger than 10...couldn't tell you exactly. The area was in northern Michigan, where our family would vacation in one of two cabins (either ours or our grandparents' place) near Roscommon. Now, a bit down the road from our cabin stood an abandoned house on a hill. And, yes...it was actually on a hill. Y'know, just like every creepy house in every lame haunted house movie you've ever seen. "But this here's REAL!"

What made this house memorable wasn't so much that it was abandoned, although that in itself would give you a mild case of the "creepers" if you had to walk through it. No, it still had stuff in it. Stuff that you wouldn't expect to find if the family had simply moved out. Personal effects like record albums, photographs, books, clothes, dishes, etc.

You may well say "Well, geez, William, how do you know the family had abandoned it if there was still stuff in there? Maybe it was a vacation home and you were a trespassing tot!"

But to that accusation, I answer: "Look. I know it was abandoned because the place was falling apart. The steps were caving in, and the floorboards had large sections missing--if you were on the upper floor, you actually had to be careful where you walked for fear of falling into the ground level below."

See, that shushed you the hell up.

But to continue...I remember we took a few items with us. One item was an old "Candid Camera" record album and another was a "Happiness is..." Charlie Brown book. There might've been other things, but I can't remember. My sister Sandi's usually better at remembering that trivial stuff. Come on, Sandi, fill in the blanks. I know I'm missing some stuff, here!


But I have to say, even as a kid, there was something unsettling about listening to the very album that I knew had been heard by a family that had vanished under circumstances that couldn't have been merry. If the "me" of then had been the "me" of today, I would've avoided that or any items from the "creepy crawly house" like the plague. It would be as if their bad karma could transfer to me simply by hearing what they'd heard or reading the same pages that they'd read. I don't believe in superstition, but COME ON...that's just freaky.

And here's my last question...the one that I ponder most. One that will probably never be answered. Namely, what the DEUCE had happened to the people who owned that house? If they simply moved away, they wouldn't have left their personal effects behind. They either would've taken the stuff with them or thrown them out. The worst case scenario that my mind keeps drifting back to is, of course, that the family had met a bad end--in that VERY house. But if so, you'd think some surviving or distant relatives would've sold the place or at the very least would've claimed the personal effects.

In the years that followed, the house decayed further. The last I heard, it was just a foundation-sized hole in the ground, judging from the video my sister shot with her husband and kids when they ventured to the site. (Really, Sandi? You want to pass that unanswered, haunting question to your youngins?)

Answers! I want 'em!

Props to Our Ancestors...

Have you ever wondered how the hell our ancient ancestors came up with some foods that we take for granted today? By that, I mean foods that aren't exactly intuitive. An intuitive food like an apple dangling from a tree is a no-brainer.

But, take coffee. There are so many steps you have to go through before you've got a cup of piping hot coffee, that you'd pretty much have to know what your finished "goal" is before you start. It's not as though you'd be walking along some path in the woods, see a bright red berry, and think to yourself:

"Y'know...I wonder what would happen if I picked the seeds from that berry, roasted them, ground them up, added boiling water to it, then passed it through a filter? Might taste pretty good!"

Some pioneer of food preparation had to have done it. But where would the inspiration come from? It's not like that long process would apply to just any berry. When you're eating an apple, do you look at the seeds and think, "I wonder what would happen if I removed all these apple seeds, roasted them, ground them up, and added boiling water to them?" Of course not! It would never occur to anyone.

And then there's bread. I get the idea that people would pick the seed/grains from the wheat chaff and eat 'em, but what would inspire them to mash up the grain to powder, mix it up with water into dough, toss in some yeast/fungus, then put it into a kiln/oven? You'd have to have a lot of time on your hands to get that creative and experimental, and the Neolithic era didn't exactly scream "leisure time". Yet someone did it...

Ahh, well. I suppose when the entire focus of existence at that point in time centered on food, it would be easy to get obsessed with it and get creative.

There. I answered my own question.

"Procedural" crime drama shows...BEGONE!

What are "procedural crime drama shows", you ask? Oh, you know them:

CSI and its spinoffs, NCIS and its spinoff, Criminal Minds, The Mentalist, Lie to Me, etc.

They possess a pseudo "edginess" (quick edits, gritty b&w "flashbacks", CGI close-ups of crime scene details) that's not so edgy once you realize that they ALL do it and they do it according to strict formulas. The writing, the directing...the plot and characters...all predictable and formulaic. And all conflict is neatly wrapped up at the end of the hour with a lame Top 40 "feel good" song intruding on the scene to remind you that you're supposed to feel happy/sad. Could you imagine Kubrick closing out a film with a Coldplay tune while the characters reflect on a job well done?

Speaking of characters, those of one show are virtually interchangeable with the others. There's the stern "mentor" or straight man who's there to anchor the more "quirky" characters and keep them in line:

And because the producers and writers are either too lazy or cowardly to come up with anything original, appealing, or controversial with regard to the "comic" foils, they just skip characterization and take the easy shortcut to quirky: hairstyles or wardrobe.

"Hey, look! I'm wearing goth makeup/cats eyes glasses and pink-dyed hair/cliched professorial attire and a bowtie! I MUST be a goofy, nuanced character! I mean, ya don't see THAT everyday! What am I gonna do next? WHEW, who knows?? I'm just unpredictable enough to show up for work tomorrow wearing a 'Hello Kitty' t-shirt!"

You might well say "Hey, Willy...don't like it? Don't WATCH it!" Well, that would be fine, except that these shows are all hits. People are actually believing that they're watching quality programming. Which, in turn, spawns more clones, which in turn crowds out all original shows from the TV lineup, just as the reality TV genre has done. Truly original, well-written, brilliantly directed shows will all be relegated to cable or just disappear altogether.

And THAT would suck.

Plastic packaging...

Am I the only person who finds it a daunting task to pry small electronics from their hard plastic packages? Y'know, the ones where they fuse two flat pieces of plastic together with the item in the middle, and your challenge is to pry the bonded plastic apart.

Ultimately, you're forced to resort to using a scissors to cut a path to the product's "cavity" and free it that way. But then you've gotta watch out for cutting yourself on the edge of the cut plastic--yes, it's THAT sharp.

Gr.

How much of the Olympics will I be watching, you ask?

None! Absolutely none!

This hereby ends the shortest Olympics-dedicated blog you're likely to read anywhere. Savor it.

Google...it humbles you.

Have you ever come up with some "unique" turn of phrase? Some brilliant nickname or catchphrase that you're CERTAIN no one ever had thought of before you?

Well, that's TERRIFIC!

Except...Google it. Oh, go ahead and do it. Surely no one out there is as clever as YOU, right?

But, then you run your original idea through that magical search portal...and...

...sigh.

YouTube Fun-O-Rama!

Here's a link to a YouTube video I put together of our work's holiday party from last month. Do enjoy the lunacy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viOYWLsyYVY&hd=1

Speaking of bad...

...I haven't updated in quite a while!



I'll do better. I promise.



Just for giggles, below is a photo I took of the Space Needle from Kerry Park. Well, actually...not so much a photo as it is a still image from a video I took. But why split hairs, right?