Category: photog’s Corner

Here you will find the stuff that shouldn’t be mixed in the other categories but interest me. caveat emptor.

Dunwich Slips Into Permanent Dumb

photog Country Music Reviews, Current Events, Life in Dunwich, Music Reviews, photog's Corner, Photography

Dunwich is a strange place.  Although most humans here appear to be sentient, they’re not.  Many of them continue to breath and move and even talk without even the tiniest shred of gray matter.

First Selectman Cthulhu called a town meeting last night and tried to explain why they should finally vote to accept the 2025/2026 budget during this third referendum.  But regardless of how many citizens he ate, they would not agree to a budget.  Finally after he was developing acid reflux, he asked them why they would not agree.  Their spokeswoman was a vapid forty-something who stood her ground and said, “Why do we need a budget?”

Cthulhu was so flabbergasted by this lack of understanding that he dropped the six Whatleys he was about to swallow and just broke down and wept.  Finally he composed himself and just walked off right through the south wall of town hall and hasn’t been seen since.

In his absence I took it upon myself to explain to this rube just how government worked.  I explained that a budget allowed us a framework for stealing the public’s money and also provide a basis for increasing this theft on a yearly basis.  This actually worked and she thanked me for the clarity of my explanation.

Seriously, this question was actually raised at a town meeting, “Why do we need a budget?”  I think the millennials have reached that point where maintaining a viable civilization is very doubtful

21JUN2025 – An Interesting Day

photog Book Reviews, Life in Dunwich, photog's Corner, Reviews, Science Fiction / Fantasy, SF&F Book Reviews , , ,

A recent post called “Where Will We Be in 2,500 AD”  reminded Ed of an old song from 1969 called “In the Year 2525.”

“Remember this one?

In the year 2525, if man is still alive

If woman can survive, they may find

In the year 3535

 

…    (very long series of verses)   …

 

Now it’s been ten thousand years

Man has cried a billion tears

For what, he never knew, now man’s reign is through

But through eternal night, the twinkling of starlight

So very far away, maybe it’s only yesterday

In the year 2525, if man is still alive

If woman can survive, they may find”

 

And that produced this comment by me:

“I remember it well. I was in the family station wagon heading for Long Beach Island on the Jersey shore for the summer vacation when it came on the radio for the first time. I was reading a science fiction anthology edited by Robert Heinlein called “Tomorrow, the Stars.” Life was simpler then.”

Well, of course that got me thinking.  As I remembered that was a pretty good anthology.  But unfortunately, it was a trade paperback from 1969 so it fell apart about fifty years ago or so.  Curses!

But Amazon.com has some redeeming value.  I found a hard back copy (seventeen years older than the paperback I owned but in much, much better shape) and purchased it for a very reasonable sum.

And, as remembered, there are several very good stories inside; C. M. Kornbluth’s “The Silly Season,” Kurt Vonnegut’s “The Report on the Barnhouse Effect” (I forgot he was the author), Isaac Asimov’s “Misbegotten Missionary,” William Morrison’s “The Sack,” Fritz Leiber’s “Poor Superman” and several others that I still like.

So now that will allow me to enjoy some excellent short science fiction from the golden age (or was it the silver age?).

And I’ll need it.  I was reading Heinlein’s posthumously published alternate novel to his “Number of the Beast” alternate universe story; “The Pursuit of the Pankera.“  But I just couldn’t read it straight through.  Just like in the “Number of the Beast” the four main characters just talk way, way too much.  It was like an endless struggle session to see who could out-Heinlein who.  I also developed a strong antipathy for his character Hildy.  I wanted a monster to squash her when she started hectoring them.

I will admit it was better than “Number of the Beast” but I couldn’t finish that one either.  Maybe it’s me but after his illness in the ‘70’s I don’t think his writing ever recovered the vitality it had before “I Will Fear No Evil.”  Or maybe something changed in me.

But anyway, Heinlein’s picks in the anthology I’ll be rereading show good taste at least in conventional science fiction from the 1950s.  Thank goodness he didn’t have access to his continua craft in his old age and could go back and change his story selections for that anthology.  I’m not sure I’d enjoy them.

Today I also received my handy-dandy manual chain saw doo-hickey (in the same box as the book).

It’s the chain for a chain saw with carabiners on the ends to allow it to be used using human power.  I went back to my downed tree and took a three-foot length from the trunk and it only took about twenty minutes of sawing.  Of course, I took another twenty minutes of breaks to restore strength to my tired old arms but still this is a factor of ten faster than it took me to cut the last chunk using the bow saw.  My next gambit is to see if I can attach the ends of a chain to the frame of my bow saw.  That would make it more convenient to use.  Alternatively, I could imagine attaching the chain to the rear wheel of a stationary bicycle and really improving my efficiency.  I guess I’m anticipating a future without gasoline or batteries.  But I do think strangely.

Well, it was an interesting day.

The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves

photog Country Music Reviews, Current Events, Life in Dunwich, Music Reviews, My Fiction, OCF, photog's Corner, Photography

Today is the first day of the new OCF editorial regime.  I’ve noticed over the last year that the quality of my posts has been inconsistent.  And I believe the reason for this problem is that sometimes I’m covering old ground again.  I’ve said about all there is to say about some of the political issues of the day and I’m just banging the drum, so to speak.

And this is not a good thing to be doing.  In addition, I really need to finish my book and get it published and see if fiction writing is something I want to do.  So these two separate situations point me to a change in the way I run my website.  I’ll continue to post the photo and quote of the day, same as always.  As far as a daily post, I’ll put something up but if I don’t have a topic that’s truly crying out to be covered then I’ll put something else up.  Maybe some photos that I like or a link to a song or a video that caught my attention.  This will free up more of my time for fiction writing and it will prevent me repeating myself and boring the readers.

I think this is a good idea and I expect it to improve the site significantly.  Anyway, I’ll give it a try and see how it goes.

Summer Solstice 2025

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, photog's Corner, Reclaiming the Family , ,

June 20, 2025 at 10:42 PM EDT is the Summer Solstice.  This is a point of inflection for my year.  For the last couple of months, the longer days temporarily color my mood brighter.  Added to this is the knowledge that the days are still getting even longer.  Even if the weather is often not optimal, I revel in the astronomical ascendancy of the Sun.

But starting on June 21st the days will be growing shorter.  Now granted this is the fairest time of the year.  The sun is tropical and the heat sears into my soul.  And this is like an elixir of youth for my tired old bones.  But psychologically I recognize that the rollercoaster has reached the top of the highest peak and for a split second it is poised between rising and falling.  Just long enough for us to look around and see heaven around us just before the bottom drops out of the ride and we plummet back to Earth.

And so, for the next two months I drink in every photon of sunlight and revel in kids free from school and looking to fill up their time with play.  I see that there’s a new Superman movie coming out soon.  Maybe it’s a woke nightmare.  Maybe Superman is a Biden/Harris supporter.  But maybe he’s still fighting for truth, justice and the American way.  I’ll find out.  And if it’s any good I’ll bring the kids.  We’ll spend way too much money on lousy popcorn and watery soda.  But We’ll get to debate the strengths and weaknesses of the 2025 son of Krypton.  Who knows, maybe he’ll surprise me.  Or maybe we won’t see it because the reviews are terrible.  But we’ll find stuff to do.

I have a feeling this is the summer we do some fishing.  Dunwich is mostly soggy so there are plenty of lakes and ponds full of what pass for bass and trout.  I think I can get most of them to cast a line in the water.  I haven’t been fishing in twenty-five years.  That’s a long time.  I think it’s time I did.

Objectively speaking, I’m a relic.  I’m much closer to the end of my life than the beginning and now I can actually feel it.  Even maintaining my present vitality requires discipline and work.  And even that is a matter of delaying the inevitable.

And yet, every day is a gift.  We interact with our fellow creatures and try to be useful and positive.  Encouraging the young and facilitating the efforts of those trying to make it a better place.  Those are things that even a relic can accomplish.

So, here’s the official beginning of Summer 2025.  I will do my darndest to make this a successful season for me and Camera Girl and the rest of the clan.  I’m looking forward to all of my rituals and all of the little joys of summer.  Barbecues, local baseball, fireworks, the Dunwich Fair, Fourth of July, Labor Day and all the rest.  We’ll make sure we feel the sun before it retreats back into the hell that is New England Winter.

At least, that’s my plan.  Enjoy.

Bullet Ants Won

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, photog's Corner, Reclaiming the Family

Today Camera Girl put me in charge of two of my grandsons one nine and one twelve, for one hour.  She had fed them twice and occupied them all morning with games and movies.  She just needed enough time to start up her dinner and clean up after their plates and bowls.  So, I said, “Sure, no problem, we’ll go shoot some pool.”

So down to the first floor and the pool table.  After they fought for five minutes about who would break, we began the game.  But apparently watching each other (and me) take our turns was too infinitely boring.  I attribute this time dilation to the bowls of ice cream they had just inhaled.  Glucose, sucrose, lactose and galactose were coursing through their blood streams at concentrations that reduced their attention spans to milliseconds at most.

So, they started wandering around looking for something to fiddle with.  First, they found the lat-machine.  I only had a hundred pounds on the cable but neither of them weighs close to that much.  So, I see them suspending themselves from the bar.  And then I notice they’re swinging from it and I have to step in, “Hey, hey cut that out you’re gonna get hurt!”  Finally, they listen and move on to the weight bench so I have to start yelling again.  That’s all I need is for one of them dropping the bar on a foot or something.

So, we compromise and they start taking turns on the rowing machine.  At first, they’re still taking a turn at the pool table but soon enough they’re just cycling back and forth between them doing a couple of hundred meters each on the machine.  Having been completely abandoned at this point I cleared the table and came over to where they were rowing and watched as they amused themselves with something that I considered tedious exercise.

Mercifully, after a half hour, they wore off their sugar high and we went back for another game of pool before starting back upstairs.  With twenty minutes left I convinced them to take a walk around the yard.  They put on their rain boots and we walked around in the soggy air.  It was gray and humid but walking is always good therapy for kids.  It engages their muscles and makes them receptive to speech.  I asked them about their plans for the summer.  They had none.  I asked them what they were doing tomorrow.  They said swimming in my pool.  This was news!  I said, “Okay, let’s just check with your mom.”

Then they found a small rubber ball and began an impromptu game of soccer.  It quickly became animated and eventually spirited (violent and combative).  Then the ball ended up in the pond (swamp) and that was that.  By that point, Camera Girl came looking for us.  My hour was up.  I had fulfilled my responsibility honorably and she released me from bondage.  Now they would spend another two hours watching a movie about dragons and warriors and then head home for dinner.

But the movie ended about a half hour earlier than their departure time so they began to get antsy.  Camera Girl was trying to stop them from playing soccer in the living room so I tried an experiment.  I turned on the movie “Them!”  Well, it was like hypnotism.  As soon as the black and white image of the New Mexican desert appeared on the screen, they became catatonic.  They sat down and didn’t make a sound.  I knew there wasn’t enough time to reach the good stuff so I advanced the DVD to the first ant attack.  Adolescent boys and giant ants.  Magic.

It is remarkable how much mental energy is expended herding adolescent boys.  They have an amazing propensity for changing gears and battling each other.  But herd them we must.  Letting them get bored is a big mistake.  Their ability to get into trouble is remarkable.  Without supervision and organized activity, the number of broken windows and smashed electronic equipment would become prohibitively expensive.

On the drive home, we spent the time discussing whether giant carpenter ants were less deadly than giant army ants or giant bullet ants.  Bullet ants won.

All God’s Children

photog photog's Corner, Religion ,

Over the course of the last thirty years more and more exoplanets have been “discovered.”  In most cases the astronomers use changes in stellar light output measured by their instruments to infer the diameter of a planet transiting in front of its star.  And what they’ve discovered is there are thousands of these planets.  In fact, they seem ubiquitous.  Everywhere we look we find them.

And this has convinced an awful lot of people that life must be ubiquitous in the universe too.  And that intelligent life must be common too.  This would go a long way to encouraging the crowd who believe that human beings are nothing special and any belief in the divine origin of the human race is completely unfounded.  The story goes we’re just some monkeys that got a little smarter than the other monkeys and have become a blight on the face of “Gaia.”

I have to say, I completely disagree.  I look at the Earth and compare it to the other planets in our solar system and I’m struck by how many factors conspire to make Earth a paradise while leaving all of the other planets different flavors of hell.  Everything from the effect of our large satellite, to the strength of the magnetic field to the balance between elements and compounds that make up the oceans and atmosphere, to the exact orbit of Earth around the Sun.  And that’s not to mention the remarkable way terrestrial life has shaped the environment in remarkable ways.  Plant life has increased the oxygen content of the atmosphere and life has changed the environment in innumerable ways.

And then we have the fossil record demonstrating the prodigious changes that have gone on for billions of years to produce the current flora and fauna of this remarkable world.  From the one-celled origins of life to the present-day complexity of creatures as varied as hummingbirds and blue whales; birds of paradise and Siberian tigers; dragonflies and giant pandas.  And us.

I’m sorry, I cannot believe that all this is just the random result of fermions and bosons rattling around the aftermath of the “big bang.”  To quote the immortal words of Vizzini, “Inconceivable.”  And I know he was dead wrong every time he said it but that is my rock bottom intuition.  All of this is purposeful.  All of this was directed.  We are here because life has meaning and human life is the soul behind the giant mechanism.  We are the witness and the object for which the whole dizzying array was created.

We are the guests of honor in a parade that stretches out to the detectable limits of the universe and back and forth in time from, “Let there be light” to the end of “Revelations.”  We’re here to make sense out of the wonders of creation and to use them to figure out the full potentialities of the human mind and soul.

And I don’t believe for a minute that we’ll destroy ourselves utterly.  History has shown just how stupid and cruel we can be.  Humans can be more vicious than any predator.  There are no depths we can’t sink to.  But that is lowest part of our nature.  We have not yet begun to figure ourselves out.  We’re still ignorant children.  But we will grow up and we will grow out of our ignorance.  And then we will become what we are supposed to be.  God’s children.

There’s Gotta Be

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, photog's Corner ,

Now all the stuff comes at us left and right.  Today is Father’s Day and that’s great.  But also, I went to the high school graduation commencement ceremony for one of my grandsons.  It was raining so we were sitting in raincoats on chairs covered in plastic with another sheet of plastic over our legs.  So, it wasn’t exactly relaxed and carefree.  But you come out to support the family and these ceremonies have their logic and things will go according to this logic.  There are the two main speeches by the kids with the best grades and there might be a poem from the poet laureate (imagine, at eighteen!).  And all that’s fine.  It’s all about beginnings and endings and growing up and moving out into a larger world.  And that’s great.  The kids are thinking about all the friends they’ve made and all the growing up they’ve done and being excited for the future.  None of the sentiments are all that original.  But that’s not the point.  For the adults it’s nostalgic and for the kids it’s marking the day and saying goodbye to childhood.  All good.

But then they send up this girl whose speech is associated with some kind of a prize.  Maybe the speech was what won her the prize.  Although if that were true, I have to wonder who is in charge of the curriculum at this high school.

First of all, it was way too long.  The valedictorian’s address took about seven minutes.  This other thing seemed to go on and on.  Of course, maybe it just seemed to go on for hours.  The thesis was that the classroom was the only place where she was happy.  And she hammered away at all the other parts of life where she was unhappy.  Home with her family, between classes at school, at events with “friends,’ working on projects with her classmates and interacting with other people in general.

She described how only in the classroom did she feel accepted and valued by those around her.  Her family, her friends, her classmates in general and just random members of the human race made her feel unappreciated and negatively valued.

After this had gone on for what seemed forever Camera Girl and I looked at each other with the same expression, “What the hell is this!”  So, I looked around and I could notice at least a few of the spectators had a pained confused expression.

Finally, it ended and there was applause but compared to even the poet laureate it was short and half-hearted.  Later on, I was thinking about this speaker.  She was sort of odd looking.  Short, heavy, noticeably unattractive and her expression was a sort of grimace.  And I wondered whether her speech had been vetted by whoever is in charge of the commencement.  I’m guessing not.  Maybe that’s part of academic freedom.  The speakers are free to say whatever they want.  Well, if that’s so then I would at least hope they would make an effort to choose for speakers only those who weren’t undergoing a mental breakdown.

Honestly, I wouldn’t allow someone that morose to speak in front of a crowd of high school students and their friends and family.  It might convince them that the faculty and the administration were nuts too.  I think this girl is symptomatic of the general breakdown of mental health in this generation.  This girl’s maladapted view of life seems to have been selected as a virtue by whoever selected her to speak.  I think we were supposed to empathize with her point of view.  I didn’t empathize with her.  All I felt was sympathy for her friends and family for having to live with someone so messed up that sitting in a classroom was preferable to all other forms of human interaction.  I’m guessing she is part of the LGBTQ “community.”

I guess in a way I should take comfort from the experience.  When school ends this week, I’ll be seeing my grandkids.  And we’re bound to get along better than the antisocial nightmare I listened to.  When I see the graduate, I have to ask him what he thinks of the girl who made this speech.  There’s gotta be a story behind that trainwreck.  There’s gotta be.

The Blue States are Hurting

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, photog's Corner, Trump , , , ,

Trump seems to have turned off the faucet that Biden was using to keep the blue states solvent.  A sense of panic is setting in and lots of towns are finding their voters are revolting against the budget increases that followed the end of the COVID gravy train (CARES Act).  All of the unfunded mandates that were paid for with that money now have to be paid for by the state and local governments.  And the local governments are squealing like stuck pigs because the state is hanging them out to dry.

 

In Dunwich it’s reaching a crisis.  There are grumblings against Cthulhu because he took credit for the CARES Act spending.  Now he’s being blamed for the higher taxes and another Great Old One; Azathoth is taking advantage of the outrage to challenge Cthulhu in the coming First Selectman race.  Azathoth’s campaign literature is branding his plan as MAGA (Make Azathoth Govern Again).

He’s handing out red hats and recently he’s started to take on a familiar orange tint.  His boldest campaign promise is that under his administration he would pledge not to eat anyone at public meetings or official town functions.  When asked for public comment by the local radio channel Cthulhu ate the reporter and walked out of the studio vowing to put a stop to all this “fake news” and misinformation.  He was quoted (from a distance) as saying, “This is madness.  If I can’t eat my constituency when they cross the line, then Dunwich would descend into anarchy and no one wants anarchy, except anarchists and I hate anarchists, even thought they taste really good.”

 

Outside of the Dunwich enclave the human (or somewhat human) local governments are probably going to have to tighten their belts a good deal.  Lots of services that everyone has come to think of as critical will be on the chopping block.  One of these is winter road treatment.  Salt, sand and other materials have surged in price this year and depleted supplies will likely bust the budgets of towns and cities if we have another normal winter like we had in 2024/25.  Likewise with neglected infrastructure and school costs.  The state has mandated very expensive special education requirements.  Providing these mandated services may mean that the rest of the students will lose out on curriculum and services like library and arts classes.

It’s believed by the local governments that if these services are curtailed that voters will agree to add them back into the budget.  But from what I’ve heard and seen this isn’t the case.  A revolt is going on and the angry voters in New England may finally have become fed up with the feckless spending that their politicians routinely legislate.  The next few weeks are going to be instructive as these towns and cities struggle to resolve the impasse that has developed.  The budgets are overdue and without a budget they can’t begin signing contracts and paying salaries.

I think I’ll go to Azathoth’s July rally.  I hear he dances a mean YMCA.

Can We Move on from the Zombie Apocalypse?

photog Literature, photog's Corner, Science Fiction / Fantasy , ,

Since Night of the Living Dead premiered in 1968 there has been a steady stream of zombies.  Now that stream has become a raging torrent in the last ten years.  It’s been relentless.  TV shows, spinoffs, movies, sequels, commercials, comedies, romance novels, you name it.

But hasn’t it become an enormous bore?  First off, how ridiculous is the whole concept?  The rotting corpses of the dead are walking around attacking and devouring the living.  It’s really incredibly stupid as science fiction.  And as horror it’s so played out it’s hard to imagine there are still people willing to pay money to watch any more of this fare.

Isn’t it about time we came up with a more interesting apocalypse?  Even the Mad Max dystopia is better than zombies.  For instance, the Lord Humungus looks like he might have an interesting back story.  Maybe he was bullied as Schoolboy Humungus and would have preferred to rule the Wasteland with a more humane and progressive regime but you know how those dogs of war are once they’ve been unleashed.

After all, this is a big world full of all kinds of interesting people and customs and problems.  And with the Global American Empire seemingly winding down, writers and storytellers could concoct any number of fascinating local plot lines involving wars and criminal enterprises and local disasters that would require heroes and villains to give the audience their best efforts.

And of course, with the advent of AI and drones and all the other aspects of high technology leaving the precinct of science fiction and entering reality there really is no end to the possibilities available to a writer looking to thrill his audience with wholesale mayhem.  I hesitate to play up the bio-weapon genre because that comes too close to the “realistic” school of zombie apocalypse (ala the “I Am Legend” virus plotline).  But whatever the angle, the world is full of marvelous dangerous stuff where the most marvelous and dangerous stuff is human beings; live human beings not walking cadavers.

I am drawn to the idea of a future world where technology breaks down over the majority of the planet and has to be reignited by some local renaissance.  Maybe we reach peak oil and we get pushed back to steam locomotives and coal fired industry.  There could be some havens of modernity with old nuclear power plants limping along using fissile material scavenged from ICBMs.

And then some genius comes up with a new power source.  Or maybe it’s an old power source that he improves.  But whatever it is it would cause a ripple of change in this stalled out world.  And anyone with a little imagination can spin that into an epic of a bunch of novels.  In fact, it’s not that different from the Foundation books.  And of course, it’s a variation on the history of Western Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire.

Of course, there is probably someone reading this who looks at this the other way around and says, “Wait a minute!  Why not write a zombie apocalypse in Roman Britain?”  To which my only answer would be, “Damn you, George Romero!  Damn you to hell!!!!!!!!!!”

Probably Not Smart

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, OCF, photog's Corner ,

Apparently random luck rules our lives to an extent that I think is hard to overemphasize.  Back two weeks ago I wrote about a tree that came down across my driveway.  After I finished cutting the top of the tree away, I took a big wrecking bar and rolled it to the side of the driveway.  For the last two weeks I’ve been planning to cut it up into smaller sections and put it aside.  But there it still is three quarters to the side of the lower driveway and one quarter on.  It looks awful and speaks volumes about my lack of organization and discipline.

But the funniest thing happened yesterday.  A guy was driving on the road by my house when something strange happened.  The shoe he was wearing on the foot that he used for working the brake and gas got tangled up with the gas pedal and he couldn’t get it free.  Somehow, he must have panicked and lost control of the steering while attempting to free his foot from the gas and he ended up turning onto my property close to where the driveway was.  He crashed through some small pines without even slowing down but the trunk of the downed tree was perfectly positioned to stop his car dead.  He wasn’t badly hurt and his car only sustained some damage where it hit the tree so it was able to back out of the debris once he got over the shock.  Looking at the line he was making through my yard the next stop was the bottom floor of my house.  That would have been bad.  That would have been a mess for both of us.

So, this is apropos of nothing.  It’s just kind of crazy how two random acts of fate can interact with each other to some almost purposeful end.  If that tree hadn’t fallen, he would have hit it square on and his car would have been totaled.  If I had cut it up as I had planned in a timely manner he would have landed in my house and we both would be having a very bad month.

It’s funny.  Even when I have bad luck it seems to turn into good luck for me.  For a long time, I’ve had this theory.  I feel like I’ve been borrowing good luck from an account and one day it’s all going to come due and I’m going to have a phenomenally bad day.  But maybe I’m wrong.  The exact mechanism of luck is not apparent to me.  And I think there are different kinds of luck.  For instance, I never win at games of chance.  I’ve never made a fortune investing in stocks.  All my luck runs to bad things not happening to me.  And almost all of my luck involves escaping the consequences of my own poor judgement; sometimes by mere fractions of a second or sixteenths of an inch.  And it’s been going on since I was a child.  And over the course of a lifetime, I’ve become convinced that there really is something called luck.  And some people actually have it significantly in their lives.

Anyway, it’s just something that seems to happen to me from time to time.  Maybe I really do have a guardian angel.  I guess it would be the height of ingratitude to ask him to let me hit the mega-millions just once.  Probably not smart.