The Neon Nurse's Charting

Did you ever play this when you were a kid? A sort of Tag where, when the person who was It caught another player, they had to join hands, so that eventually you had this long snake of kids chasing along after the ones who were still loose?

My inquiry into the source of the animation used in the Crazy Love video has felt like that.

One of the first replies I got was from Jerry Beck of the blog Cartoon Brew, who IDed the film as "a Hungarian animated feature from 1973 called "Johnny Corncob" (János vitéz)". (Gryphons_Lair got the Hungarian part!) Jerry sent me a link to the film's listing on IMDB.com, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0121431/ , where I found out a few more details.

It was based on a famous poem by Sándor Petöfi, and made for his 150th birthday.

It was also the first Hungarian feature-length animation film. Further searching told me it won several film awards.

From IMDB: "There is a short scene in the film, where the battling Hungarian and Turkish armies form a flag of Hungary. The scene was considered "too nationalist" by the Socialist government and nearly caused the banning of the the movie."

I also heard from Kip W who had passed the mystery on to rec.arts.animation, and today he told me Chris Sobeniak knew the answer:

"It's "János vitéz" or "Johnny Corncob", Hungary's first animated feature, produced by Pannonia Film and directed by Marcell Jankovics.

Does seem kinda odd it would show up on a video devoted mostly to H-B material (was there an English dub I don't know of they did of this)."

So now I grab onto the chain again. Having the name in English, I tried Google again and found THIS link - http://www.sealsandcrofts.com/sealscrofts4.html

""Forever Like the Rose" was used as a title for an unreleased, animated film in 1978. Seals and Crofts are cartoon characters, reminiscent of the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine." There are various original songs and a score composed with Bob Alcivar, a writer and arranger they've known since their days in the Dawnbreakers. "Forever Like the Rose" was produced by Hanna-Barbera through Pannonia Studios in Hungary. The story is adapted by Kimmer Ringwald from the epic poem Johnny Corncob, by Petofi Sandor and the groundbreaking 1973 film by Marcell Jankovics."

So there is a hint towards the Hanna-Barbera connection, though not a clear answer. Had they gotten an option on the US release of Johnny Corncob that they never followed up on? Did someone working on the Country Rock videos just find the film sitting around and assume they could use it? Maybe we'll never know....

But isn't it amazing what you can learn by linking up a few brains and the internet?

The upload to YouTube finally worked!!!

So here's the backstory.

While doing our usual hunting and gathering for books and things to resell, I picked up a videotape called HBTV Country Rock. This turned out to be music videos, a la MTV, where they took clips from Hanna-Barbera animations (Yogi Bear, the Flintstones, the Jetsons and many of their less famous ones as well), and made vids to go with songs like "Queen of Hearts" (Juice Newton), "Lookin' Out My Back Door" & "Bad Moon Rising" (Creedence Clearwater Revival), "Daydream" (Lovin' Spoonful), "Rambling Man" (Allman Brothers Band) and several more. Actually, a couple of those are trippy enough to be quite entertaining!

But there was one I thought was actually really good. The song is "Crazy Love" by Poco, but I can't find ANYTHING on where they might have gotten the animation. It's strongly in the pop art style of Peter Max or the Yellow Submarine stuff of the 60s, and I think the storyline must be like a folk or fairy tale, with a young man going off to sea (?) to seek his fortune, who leaves his true love behind but takes the magical (?) red rose she gives him along and uses it to...do something.

Anyway, this is the clip:



I tried Googling for the answer, and although I found out a lot I didn't know about Hanna-Barbera's connection to the music business back in the day, my question went unanswered. I even bought a fairly pricey reference book on HB's history, but nada. So if you can pass this post around to people who might know, I'd sure appreciate it.

Oh, and if you want to own a copy of the whole strangely compelling video, there are several for sale on Amazon for only a few bucks (not mine):

Click here!

The gods of Get Rich Quick are mocking me.

Here in Colorado we have two big ticket money wasting opportunities, the regular state lottery and the PowerBall Lotto. I have two sets of numbers I always play, partly because I have a paranoid feeling that as soon as I stop, they will come up as winners.

Last night on the regular lottery, had I been playing THAT one instead of Powerball, I would have had 5 out of 6 numbers and won $448. OHH WELLL.

Lois's new book came in the mail yesterday. That would be the other half of The Sharing Knife, which was so oddly split by the publisher into two separately published books even though it is CLEARLY all one story. Anyway. Because I had felt a little let down after reading the Beguilement half, I was reluctant to start Legacy. Because...what if reading the other half DIDN'T make me feel all better about the two oddly paced books with such a long delay between them?

One of the several other projects I have been pecking away at lately has required me to make my 20th century brain try to comprehend and cope with modern computer Stuff. The progress has been slow. I have been trying to convert a section of a videotape to DVD format and then to a media format uploadable to YouTube.

I feel it has been unnecessarily complex and hard.

Every time it seemed like I was figuring something out and making progress, I would get stuck in that new spot. However, last night about midnight I found yet another site which had much clearer instructions. I decided to give it a try, and during the parts where things were downloading or decoding or re-emulsifying or whatever, I went ahead and started The Book of Approach/Avoidance.

As I feared, the first few chapters were kind of...bland. It wasn't hard for me to set the book aside each time I needed to do some new thing to the video project. When the program FINALLY got done doing what it was supposed to do, I set the book aside, intending to go to bed.

But I was jazzed from the shock of the video project finally going right, so I decided to go ahead and upload it to YouTube. Of course, that part instantly went TOTALLY wrong. Well, not instantly. It went about half wrong and then caused my computer to almost but not quite totally freeze up.

So while I was waiting to see if it would all sort itself out (shyeah, RIGHT), I went back to the book. That's when it FINALLY got into the good part of the story....

About 2:30 am, I rebooted the computer manually and then turned it off for the night. Also, I mentally blew off getting much done the next day (today) and stayed up until almost 6am finishing the book.

I had to get up about an hour and a half after I finally went to bed so I could take Dreamcloud in for his appointment with Rick the Car Doctor. I got to sleep about another four hours once we came back from doing that. My plan is to go to bed early (for me) tonight, at about midnight, rolling back my sleep schedule a little so I can use the cooler early morning hours to finish a gardening project, which has been going along about as speedily as the video one.

So. My exhausted first impression of SK:Legacy is that it's very good overall, but would have been much better as one complete novel.

Now I am going to go outside and grub up massive amounts of unwanted native grass corms and roots while I try YET ONCE MORE to get my .avi file to upload to bloody YouTube.

When I am asleep, I get to watch TV shows from alternate universes. Here's one I dreamed about, although I only got to "see" the very 60's sitcom opening. It was mostly in shades of pink. Two pairs of scissors flew across the screen to clip away at a round (pink) ball that looked like hair, until it turned into a heart! And then the whole thing burst into words that said "Two Barber Boys in Love!" Strangely enough, I could read it even though I "knew" it was in Arabic....

I would totally watch that show.

But Dreamland aside, the point of this post is TV, and how I have almost NOTHING to watch since the Sopranos ended. Oh, and my opinion on that?

(Highlight to see)
Tony is pushing up the daisies. He's singing in the celestial choir (though probably not Soprano). He's an ex-mobster.

Thanks to the magic of Netflix, I have been able to catch some things that I liked a lot, and at least try some things it turned out I didn't.

For instance, some of you may recall I did not care for House. I came to realize later that it wasn't because it was a bad show. It wasn't because I didn't like weird characters with some negative aspects to their personality. (Did I not just mention I was a Sopranos fan?) It just didn't bring what I needed in order to enjoy it. It was static. It pretty much held to the same format, week in and week out, like the TV shows of my youth. But I have been spoiled. Now I expect multi-cast storylines, and story arcs that take a whole season to resolve. So, sorry, Greg House. Hope you can adjust, bud.

Another one I tried and didn't get sucked into was Dead Zone. The book, I love, and still think it's one of the best King ever wrote. The TV series just didn't do it for me.

The 4400 was also kind of a failure for me. I DO still have the second season on my Netflix list, but the ending of the first season made me gag a little, and I'm not in a big hurry to see what happens next. Heroes did a FAR better job with the concept of regular people suddenly finding out they have Powers.

A show I quite liked that didn't go past one season was Wonderfalls. I thought it was very similar to Dead Like Me in a lot of ways, yet it had a unique charm. I would have kept watching both of them if they had stayed in production.

Now onto things I really enjoyed. My nephew Jeff told me I really really really should give Arrested Development a try, and now that I have, I agree. It's the first sitcom I've liked in at least a decade.

Continuing on the "excellent" page is Veronica Mars. I wasn't sure I would like it, but I got hooked after watching the first episode. Great characters, intriguing plot line, fun dialog, the works. I REALLY wish this one had kept going.

Another one that surprised me with its general excellence was Deadwood. Now, this one isn't for General Audiences. Language-wise, it make The Sopranos look like a Sunday School picnic. Seriously. And I can't vouch for the historical accuracy. But the great character development, acting, and compelling plot lines made it one amazing show. I am deeply annoyed the creator, David Milch, pulled a Joss and left it to die so he could go work on the so far less than impressive John from Cincinnati. The pilot of which made me go 0.o

I guess, come to think of it, we do still have ONE show left, the clone and I. We haven't finished the last season of Battlestar Galactica, which again, I was astonished to find I LIKED. Although of course they are now going to bring THAT to an end....

So, what should I try next? Or should I just try to sleep more?

I had no idea I was so risque!

This feels like one of the Thursdays it is hard to get the hang of.

TruckerSon Sterling (the one who rules the mall) is on a combined business/pleasure run, touring about with wife Beth, my grandgirlie Lexi and the highly tolerant Jamie Dog. They meant to pull into Lamar for breakfast, but the actual meal taken turned out to be lunch. Then after a fun-filled trip to the Wal-mart, they had to head out to acquire beer. 40,000 cases of (I think) Bud, to be picked up in Ft. Collins and taken elsewhere.

But that was a lot of excitement for one day, and also it's rully hot out, meaning it's kinda hot IN (in my corner), and now it's already 6 o'clock and I'm wondering where the heck the day WENT!

While I'm posting, I'll pass on this great t-shirt I saw on my friend Thalionar's LJ. You use an erasable marker to fill in the blanks so you can go around looking like a cool LOLcat saying

im in ur _____, _____ing ur ______!

I would totally get one if I had any place to wear it!

Call the vet's to make arrangements for rabies shots, per this ruling:

"Health officials have issued an order requiring updated vaccinations for all dogs and cats in Prowers County. The order requires pet owners to have documentation in hand within 30 days."

In a startling turn, I was actually able to get INFORMATION from the Lamar Ledger online, and relieved to note that the actual attack happened out near Holly, some 30 miles away. But still. Check out the entry for the police report:

"3:49 p.m. Agency Assistance - Animal control responded to 204 S 6th St; Thriftway concerning a wounded Coyote that the Prower County Sheriffs officer had in vehicle. The Coyote was Euthanized and turned over to Kellie Gaines with Environmental Protection Agency."

Had. In. Vehicle. Pre the euthanization part. And note they did the hand off at the freakin' Thriftway! What, was the courthouse lawn being mowed at the time or something?

My town. I love it.

More from the Rocky Mountain News online:

"A coyote has tested positive for rabies — the first such finding in Colorado in at least 30 years.

State health officials said yesterday that the coyote was shot after attacking a person in Prowers County last Friday. The animal was sent to the lab for testing Monday at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, where the rabies was confirmed.

The person who was attacked by the coyote is undergoing rabies treatment."

Also per the LL, the victim is an elderly female. I've heard the treatment is not as painful as it once was, but man, I feel sorry for her and her family. Gotta be rough.

Okay, so Pete Townshend told me to read a book. (He seems to read a lot [must have a lot of free time on tour], and even once owned a bookstore called Magic Bus. Gotta love it.)

This is part of what he said about it:

"It is Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold. It is, incredibly, his first novel. Gold writes like an old-timer, but with the energy of a pup. The fictional elaboration of the story of a real-life magician from the '20s called Charles Carter, it is a long book in two or three parts, each part a novel in itself. I was quite depressed when I got to the last page. My world had been enriched and ennobled as I read, and suddenly I was dumped back into the honking horns and heat of Madrid where the Who just played a concert. Madrid is magnificent, but not as glorious as the world Gold had helped me occupy in my imagination."

My observation--if this is really the guy's first book, OMGWTFBBQ11!1! It's complex, enthralling, the pace never gets saggy and sloppy, and he ties up every blessed plot thread of a VERY complex story by the end.

Here's some more from Pete (yes, I'm just being lazy):

"In this wonderful book there are pirates, an U.S President assassinated via the theatre stage, the real inventor of television (young farmer Philo Farnsworth), a blind and beautiful heroine of early radical feminism, elephants, lions, dogs and secret service men. There are lots of magic tricks, brilliantly described in real-time; it's like having a seat at the show. There is even a sexy and excitable librarian. It is only my notion, but possibly a safe one, to assume that the wonderfully empathetic treatment of his mistreated female principal characters could be rooted in the fact he is married to the real-life heroine, 'survivor' and author Alice Sebold."

It was the married to Alice Sebold thing that really sold me. I read and was deeply impressed by The Lovely Bones. It seems to me it's pretty rare that one really good writers can stand to be married to another one.

Anyway, you can get very inexpensive used copies on Amazon or Half.com, if you want to give it a whirl. I've passed my copy on already, to someone I am sure will enjoy it. But I DO have another one which is more in need of a search to find it just the right owner.

It's called "The Broons - Scotland's Happy Family That Makes Every Family Happy". It seems to be a comic that runs (ran?) in the "Sunday Post" (London, I'd say). Think the older version of Gasoline Alley, but everyone speaks in dialect/accent. This is a book for someone who is extremely enamored of all things Scot. If that is you, or someone you know, tell me and I will send it to you!

I'm doing one of those puttering around taking care of little tasks that have been hanging fire way too long. (For those keeping score at home, the mechanicals still acting up are Firefox, my printer and the battery back-up system.)

The clone, reading newsy stuff on her own computer, told me about the Harry Potter based theme park someone wants to start, where one of the main attractions would be a ride based on the Weasley family's flying car.

I said it didn't sound that exciting to me. They clearly need fan help to jazz this up. Although possibly not MY help, because the first thing *I* thought of was the very old song 'Seven Little Girls Sitting in the Back Seat Kissin' and A-huggin' with Fred.'

Which would TOTALLY leave poor George out.

Here is a partial sample of the lyrics:

"Keep your mind on your driving
Keep your hands on the wheel
Keep your snoopy eyes on the road ahead
We're having fun, sitting in the backseat
Kissin' and a-huggin' with Fred...."

In case you MUST hear the whole thing or die of disappointment:

Paul Evans - Seven Little Girls
Click here to download from YouSendIt

And then my brain flipped right over to THIS superb Fred-related tune:

Maya Angelou & Jessica Mitford - Right, Said Fred
Click here to download from YouSendIt

But you will have to go find a copy of the BAND Right Said Fred doing "I'm Too Sexy" on your own.

We seem to have hit one of those little clusters of time where multiple mechanicals start to get recalcitrant. Either that or my victory over Mike's computer set-up made the ghods of technology think I was getting too big for my geeky britches.

It's true I had been foolishly ignoring an ongoing problem with the battery back-up unit. So when some stuff fell off the printer yesterday, down in the gap between the desk and the wall, I decided this was a good time to make one final test of the unit before breaking down and buying it a new battery. (The analyzing software that goes with it, by the way, is in deep denial, insisting everything is Just Fine, Dave.)

Yep, unplugging it shut everything down, as I expected. However, this time when we powered the whole array up again, the DSL was DOA. NOT as I expected.

While I got to work trying to fix it, Mike decided to go to town to play with his friend. He didn't have any shorts with pockets to wear, so he took the cellphone along in a plastic grocery bag.

About an hour later, while I was still in 'what the HECK?' mode re the DSL, he came home crying. Partway there he'd noticed the phone had fallen out through a hole in the bag.

We calmed him down with the usual 'accidents happen', 'you did the right thing trying to find it first, then telling us', and so on. Then we took a family jaunt down the road to help look. It has been a while since I walked over a mile all at once. Which I didn't quite this time either, I guess, since I had to sit down for a while on the way back. On the plus side, Caro and Mike, who had gone a ways further than I did, spotted the phone and brought it back safe and sound. So that was good.

The CenturyTel guy was SUPPOSED to call before he came, but he missed that memo, which meant a rather hurried rearrangement of furniture. The cause he found was peculiar--he said the phone jack had stopped working. How that could happen from the power being unplugged I can't begin to imagine. Maybe one of the books that fell down in the gap hit the box and it was the last straw for those 30 year old wires?

The trouble was that he could not open up the jack to really check, as it is behind part of the desk. And the desk is a gigantic triple sided behemoth that, as I recall, weighed almost 200 pounds unassembled in the box.

I was about to offer to go find my jigsaw and create an access port through the wooden desk support, which is what I did originally (thinking ahead!) so that the electrical socket is easy to get to. (Should have included the phone jack. OH WELLLL!) Then the CenturyTel guy suggested he could just put in another jack in the open space.

I said, "Go for it."

Obviously it worked, as I am back on telling you my tale of woe. What next, though? What next?

It's not as easy as it sounds.

I got a giant almost none of what I'd planned to do today done, because of keeping a promise to Mike instead.

Last year something went wonky beyond my ability to fix with the clone's computer. It would no longer connect to the internet for ANYTHING. Nothing, nada, zip.

My solution (after two days of non-stop failure to be a tech goddess) was to do the obvious thing and buy a new one. Hers was okay except for that pesky interNOT thing, and Mike's really old computer did not do much of anything right anymore. So why not move them both up a notch on the computer chain?

Speaking of Mike, we had been working for a LONG time on trying to get him to stop chewing pieces of his fingers off as a hobby. The best carrot in the bunch we held out was...The Internet! Well, today was the day he finally met all the terms and conditions.

"All" I needed to do was pop in the Restore CD and boot his computer back to factory settings, I figured. Yeah. "All" in this case meaning, find the CD, remember how it works in theory, get online to eMachines tech support when it turned out the one thing I didn't have was the authentic Windows XP code number, THEN spend a couple hours trying to get the screen settings to go to a higher resolution than FOUR colors. FOUR. No, I am not exaggerating, four. You have NO idea how crappy and unreadable a really nice extra wide LCD monitor looks in a 4 color mode.

But after a mere six hours, Mike now has the intarweb, Zone Alarm (yes, with Parental Filtering going on), Firefox and 32-bit color. Tomorrow I am going to transfer his bookmarks and other things, plus set him up on Gmail so his mail doesn't get lost in the chaos of MY inbox. (Although I do have that pared down to 77!)

And maybe I will plant those last four sickly tomatoes.

Yes, he's VERY shiny now!



That's one of my older sons, Sterling (the truck driver), who decided to ditch his long-haired country boy look. I have vague plans to give Mike the same haircut (without the beard trim) pretty soon, as a cooling off move for summer.

As is my wont, I was listing a few things on eBay the other day, some craft booklets on making beaded jewelry. I remarked to Caro that some of them seemed to have been named back in a much more innocent age.

Fetish Jewelry (not what you think!)
Fantasy Beading (ditto)
Thong Beading (Why gild the lily, is what I would wonder.)
String Me a Rainbow (Doubt you'd see any of these designs at Pridefest.)

(Yes, this is another one of those days where not much is going on and I have to make my own fun.)

Today I was reading a Colorado news feed I get, and there was a story about a guy from a town called Palisade who got appointed to something or other. "Hey, Mike," I said to Mike who was sitting next to me. "There's a town in Colorado called Palisade. Wouldn't it be funny if they had a PARK, and it was named Palisade Park?"

(This is funny because Palisade Park is one of his favorite songs, being about an amusement park.)

So we had to Google it, and you know what? They DO. So now Mike wants to go there, even though it's no bigger than Lamar, is hundreds of miles away and has NO rides of the sort he is most interested in. They ARE famous for peaches and grapes, though. So maybe we will make it there one of these years.

Also cool and apropos of nothing, last weekend the clone found this marvelous coat rack at a yard sale.



It needs a bit of hardware fix-up, but oh yes, we WILL be putting this up on a wall somewhere here in the House of Unruly Fish!

I had to get up two hours early today because I had a doctor's appointment. One of those middle-age 'My Prescriptions. Let Me Show You Them' deals where you bring your meds in a sack, like reverse trick or treat.

Where they measure your vitals. My blood pressure is too quiet to hear in my left arm. I think that might be good, but I don't know.

Where they don't say anything about you losing five pounds, except that it should be 20 more. (No, ya think?)

I guess I should be glad they let me leave normally instead of admitting me straight to the home, since I:

Brought my meds in a sack with a hole in it, thereby losing one in the car.

Forgot my checkbook.

Turned up wearing two different shoes. My Crocs are black, Mike's are navy blue and a size or two larger. No wonder I was wobbling as I walked.

But on to more amusing things.

I cross-posted the quiz to a Live Journal group called "lyric_meme", since it is all about the musical quizzing (although usually lyrics instead of visuals). One of the members, Doublefourtime, actually knew the details of the pic origins, and provided these links:

The artist writes about it HERE

I recommend you go see that one, as there are links to other artists, and you can see

Tiny Wee Elton John


Tiny Wee Jimi Hendrix


and the Tiny Wee Rolling Stones

(including Mick Jagger, who still don't keep regular hours.)

You can also enjoy a Tv advert version

Now, without further ado, here are the correct answers.

Abba
Beatles
Capatin Beefheart
Darkness
Eminem
Flying Lips
Guns 'n' Roses
Harmar Superstar
Ice T
Jackson 5
Kiss
Led Zeppelin
Missy Elliot
Nirvana
Ozzy Osbourne
Public Enemy
Queen
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Stevie Wonder
Tatu
U2
Village People
White Stripes
Xzibit
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Zappa (Frank)

Well, there went more days scooting past. Why that always surprises me, I don't know.

We are keeping reasonably busy here at the House of 1,000 Unfinished Projects. Nothing of anecdotal interest, sadly, except for my little story of how Rick the Car Doctor came to our aid in a brand new way.

We had had a funny car part sitting around for a while. It came in a box at an auction with a bunch of other stuff. It looked new, and we knew it was a "spindle" because it still had the invoice with it from the car dealership that sold it in 1998.

I'd tried looking it up online, but with no way to know what it was FOR, that quickly proved hopeless. Then I got the bright idea to show it to Rick. When I did, quick as a flash he said, "It's a spindle!"

He did go on to explain that it was part of a wheel assembly, although he was puzzled because it was so very small. But Rick knew what to do next! He called up one of his parts buds of the flavor named on the invoice. Amazingly, the part number was still in the system, and that's how we found out it was a rear wheel spindle for a 1992 Ford Festiva! Which let me list it on eBay, where it has already gotten two bids!

And now for the fun quiz.

An LJ friend of mine, Sigma7, periodically puts up a post of picspam (say THAT three times fast!), things he finds on the various pic reposting sites which amuse or please him. The other day, he found this weird alphabetical depiction of musical performers. The link came from a site all in Russian, so there is no way to find out who made it or, more importantly, who some of these people are supposed to BE.

I only knew a few of them myself. Perhaps YOU can provide some identifications?

It's not so hot now. And tomorrow should be cooler. But I had better get busy with the home cooling tasks before Saturday....

One of the blogs I check every day is Plan59.com's blog Pastelogram. These folks maintain a HUGE library of all kinds of vintage ad and other art, which they sell prints of (starting as low as $9! Unreal!).

Today's entry was a link to their 40 most popular prints. I wish I had more wall space...or that they sold these on t-shirts! (Probably not practical in terms of the multi-colors and all).

From that page you can go to see thumbnails of all 500+ currently available. I clicked around there for over an hour before I made myself stop to do something constructive. Here is one of my favorites. I think it looks like my mom and aunts posed for it!

http://www.plan59.com/av/av081.htm

Here's a sample of the kind of thing you might see if you visit the blog.



Which I obviously think you should.

Yikes. It's hot today. This afternoon it's been over 90, with winds between 35-50 mph. I have turned myself into a human evaporative cooler by getting into the shower with my clothes on, but it is still hot. Because it is hot, I am Tooooo Tirrrrred, and I don't want to go down to the basement for the big foiled cardboard to put in the west picture window, or find the big rocks to prop the front door shut from the wind, or try the a/c to see if it will start up okay.

Mike just got home from his friend Greg's house. He has been reduced to walking because he has misplaced his bike helmet. Not that riding a bike in these winds would be a very good plan.

Hmm, he brought the mail and his newest Netflix DVD is a PBS special about Global Warming. (Yes, he picked that himself.)

Mike is not having the best start to his summer, I am sorry to say. Besides the lost helmet, he messed up my TracFone by forgetting to remove it from his pocket before playing in Greg's pool. It still works, sorta kinda, but not really. I need to swap out the clone's battery in HER TracFone to see if that is the problem. Why is everything so haaarrrrddd?

The animals keep coming to me, also wanting to know why it is so hot. Also, all four of them are finally blowing their winter coats and needing to be brushed. Which I would normally do out on the back steps in the cool of the evening, but if I tried it tonight, there would be a hair-nado of disastrous proportions. So I won't.

Did I mention before I've been busy with a lot of clearing up and out and around? Yeah? OK.

I have a few things I want to find new homes for. Things *I* think are sort of cool and interesting, which COULD be donated to the Friends of the Library, if I am wrong in thinking one of my friends might really really like them.

This time it is a book called Dictionary of Teleliteracy, subtitled Television's 500 Biggest Hits, Misses and Events. It's an ex-library book in good shape. 416 pages of nostalgia, including index. Whoever says they want it first (free!) gets it!

While I'm at it, here's a strange and unusual item for roasting an individual hot dog on a BBQ grill.

Link possibly NSFW.

I look at this and know I would be tempted to buy one if I knew the right person to give it to. And yet, I also know I am a little odd....

OK, still not dead. I got busy doing a lot of things, which were Very Useful Things, but not very interesting to write about. There was a mouse crisis in there, which very nearly cost me money, and a special eBay listing day, and all the shipping that goes with that, and some weeding and garden planting and...just STUFF.

When you get right down to it, the problem is that I don't multitask all that well. But I am going to TRY to keep to my plan of doing some of the the things I want to/should every day. We'll see.

Re my subject line: The clone was looking up a TV channel called RFD-TV, because she had heard they have train shows, and we are always looking for ways to entertain Mike. She was reading off come of the things to be seen, and when she mentioned Little Richard's Rodeo, I went PING!

Turns out she said Little BRITCHES, and I just heard wrong because the fan was going. Too bad. I'd pay serious money to go see that.

*comic geek alert* My other crossover is only an idea. I had been talking in the Blue Believers email list, and just for fun threw in the question of whether Nathan and Peter Petrelli are really dead. (My guess is no.)

Someone who hasn't happened to watch the show thought I must mean Nathan (Cable) Summers, which made me think OOH! Battle of the Control Freaks with no Senses of Humor!
Could be a good crossover if someone other than me wrote it. But then I thought of a REALLY good one:

Marvel/Heroes Team-up: Hank (The Beast) McCoy and Mohinder (HOMINA-HOMINA!) Suresh BLIND US WITH SCIENCE!!!

And then I melted. */comic geek alert*