this old house of horrors

A Connecticut man fell through the floor of his 177-year-old home and plunged thirty feet into a disused well hidden underneath that was still full of water. The well had never been capped nor was there any subflooring in the 1981 addition that covered the well, which originally had been outdoors.

After he fell, the man had to tread water for some twenty-five minutes before he was rescued. You can see him being lifted to safety by firefighters in the photo below (enlargement).

That had to be completely frightening for the man as he fell. Nobody expects there's a well full of water under their floor. He must've been totally disoriented and panicking before he figured out, or was told, what had happened.

It would be like a scene in a horror movie come to life. Thank goodness this one had a happy ending for him.

mac and cheese

The last time I was in the supermarket, I saw a woman buying what must've been two dozen boxes of macaroni and cheese kits.

Those things are quite simple: a measured amount of elbow pasta and powdered mix in a pouch. You cook the pasta for a set time, then drain, add a measured amount of water and/or milk, a tablespoon or two of some kind of oil, and the powdered mix.

You combine everything and cook until the sauce is warm or hot. You can then serve immediately or bake in the oven with bread crumbs scattered on top.

The thing is: macaroni and cheese "from scratch" is just about the easiest thing to make. Why do people even bother with a pre-mixed kit?

To make from scratch, you measure the elbows by weight and drop in boiling water. While that's cooking, you combine a measured amount of oil and flour, add a dash of salt, then mix with a measured amount of milk and either cubed or shredded cheese. That's all you need.

Mix and heat until a sauce is formed and warm/hot to taste. Then drain the elbows, mix into the sauce, and you're done. Super easy to make and it tastes infinitely better than the mix kits.

flying sperm machines

I was fixing lunch for the boys yesterday and saw a flying ant in the kitchen. Given it's early winter here Down Under, that almost certainly means ants have a nest somewhere indoors, either in our house or one of the neighbors. I'll ask the husband to check the attic.

My oldest boy was curious why an ant would fly, so I tried to explain in G-rated terms that it was a male ant looking for a queen. I generally knew that flying ants were male ant drones that exist for one purpose — to copulate and fertilize the queen.

So I looked online to see if I could find something to help explain male ants to the boys without actually discussing sex. I found an article with a catchy title — "Male ants are pretty much just flying sperm (and other amazing ant facts)" — and bookmarked that for later reading.

Later, I was wondering what human society would be like if the majority were sexless females who did all the work, while the few males only existed to have sex with female queens and then died young shortly thereafter.

Would male humans be attracted by the tagline to that lifestyle — how would you like to fuck gorgeous women non-stop for a month? I'll bet more than a few males would dial the toll-free number for more information. How many would still be interested after they learned the downside?

are plants sentient?

The elderly woman whose house we permanently care for had a lot of houseplants. When she was still sharp, she told me she'd had some of them since the 1950s.

Because her health was declining when she moved out, many of the plants were in sad shape. I was able to bring most of them back to life and they've been thriving ever since. I took some of the nicest ones to her for her room at the care home where she lives in pre-virus days.

I was watering and pruning some of her aelderly begonias yesterday and, for whatever reason, thought about the age-old debate over whether or not plants are sentient — do they have any kind of awareness or are they alive but utterly oblivious?

Thinking about this made me remember the majestic and truly massive sequoia trees in California. They have trunks as big as a large house and have lived for thousands of years. Do they have any sense of themselves or are they utterly clueless?

I hope they have at least some kind of sentient awareness. It would be a shame to be so big and gorgeous and old and just not have a clue, to be completely oblivious to everything.

Maybe that's what purgatory is, if it exists. You're reincarnated as a plant for years or decades or centuries or even millennia. You'll just sit there in utter and complete oblivion.

naked humor

The meme below is so silly (enlargement) yet it had me laughing like a fool. I'm perfectly willing to wear a mask and gloves whenever I go out, but I'm really looking forward to the time when we don't have to do that any longer.

I'm fairly certain there is near universal agreement on that. The only exception might be people with a weird fetish, who get all turned on about shopping in a mask.

stop showering so much

In their July issue, The Atlantic has an interesting article that keeps getting retitled. It started out as "Hygiene Is Overrated." Then it became "You Can Be Too Clean" and, a little later, "You're Showering Too Much."

The gist of the piece is that you should wash your important parts and, definitely, your hands, but you needn't wash every square inch of your body when you shower. Otherwise, overwashing can lead to inflammations, irritations, and rashes.

My MD grandfather user to say to wash but not scrub. He said to use soap and lather surfaces but to avoid washcloths and loofahs and the like. "It should never be rougher than a dog's tongue," he used to say.

roger ramjet, hero of our nation!

As I grow older, I find myself experiencing a curious sensation more often. Something pops out of my memory that I haven't thought about in years or even, gasp, decades.

When I was in late elementary school, I sometimes watched reruns on cable of an old 1960s animated scifi kids program. I loved it for its campy value.

But then I forgot about it for maybe twenty years. Suddenly, this week, it just popped back into my head again. For no particular reason, I remembered the title and the silly theme song.

Roger Ramjet, he's our man, hero of our nation. For his adventures, just be sure to stay tuned to this station.

So I went to YouTube, fairly certain I'd find some episodes on there. I was not disappointed. You can see one below.

I showed this to my two oldest sons and they both thought it was stupid. I guess they're not quite old enough to understand how something so bad can actually be good in a weird way. There's humor in this, but it's entirely directed to adults by its creators, not to kids.

young susan

I'd never seen this picture of a young Susan "Sigourney" Weaver before today (enlargement). Holy Moses, she was a gorgeous young woman.

I'm guessing this was shot in the very late 1960s or early 1970s when she would have been in her late teens or early twenties. She looks a good bit younger here than she did when she made Alien at age thirty.

To the best of my knowledge, and I could find nothing on Google to contradict this, Weaver never did any modeling. At nearly six foot tall, she would've been a natural, but perhaps she found the challenges of acting much more significant. If so, she would have been right, because acting uses your brain whereas modeling primarily uses your body.

Searching around online for more info, I did find this bit of trivia interesting: Weaver's mother told her daughter she was plain and not pretty. Not only was she a bitch for saying this, she was flat out wrong.

a portrait of greed

The current issue of The Atlantic includes a really fascinating and well written feature article about how greed corrupted various individuals involved in the study and sale of ancient biblical papyruses.

Mix a fabulously wealthy family wanting to collect ancient artifacts but knowing little about their subject with academics of modest income and impeccable credentials.

It's not long before money and lots of it corrupts the academics who see easy marks in their patrons.

The article is a fascinating study of how greed corrupts, slowly at first, and then completely, turning the academics into frauds and thieves. I highly recommend the piece.

porn meltdown

Retired porn superstar Aurora Snow has an article now on The Daily Beast called "The Porn Industry Is Having a Major Meltdown." The piece focuses on how performers are increasingly making content at home and thus taking more and more control of their industry.

Her piece is good for what it is but doesn't really address several major issues. The first is content quality. I've seen some of the stuff she's talking about and the production values are for shit — out-of-focus camera work, performers blocking their own shots, static presentations, zero angle changes, nonexistent editing, badly framed shots, and more.

While the porn consumer isn't necessarily looking for Hollywood production values, if you're peddling porn that looks like it was shot with a cheap mobile phone, you may be doing yourself a disservice.

The second major issue is that she's really only talking about female performers in heterosexual porn. The men who work in straight porn are not able to make much on their own because they've always been second-class performers. In the upside-down economics of smut, women are the big money earners while men are largely replaceable and interchangeable and paid only a fraction of what the women earn.

Still, it's better that the performers control their industry, given producers traditionally shared no revenue with them, unlike mainstream entertainment. But I suspect the ones who will really make a mint are the ones who present high quality content and not just filmed fucking.

the etiquette of sharing dreams

I'm on the email list for free daily briefings from New York Times. One from earlier this week began "it seems to be conventional wisdom that telling people about your dreams is inappropriate or rude or even boring."

My reaction was immediate before I even read the second sentence: bullshit. The second sentence turned out to agree with me but in a much more diplomatic way.

I've never heard this bit of conventional wisdom, but if it's widespread, it's moronic. Context and setting are all important in discussing such a topic.

Few people, I'm sure, want to hear a long-winded narrative about someone else's dream. But a one-sentence throwaway line, however, likely would not arouse any objection except from the most disagreeable.

I had a dream last night that I strangled my husband. That would certainly be a conversation-starter. (I didn't really have that dream, please note.)

Many people find dreams fascinating, me included. So if you're talking with someone who you know is interested in dreams or says so, I certainly see nothing wrong with mentioning, briefly, something about your own dreams.

It's a topic, like most, that requires judicious self-editing. Because, regardless of the subject, few people want to hear a verbose, lengthy narrative of any personal subject. Common sense applies.

limited library love

Two of the Sydney library's nine branches have reopened but for curbside pickup only of material reserved online. All seven of our suburban library system's branches have reopened for in-person visits, but by appointment only.

Needless to say, limited library use is better than no library. I've returned all the stuff I checked out before the libraries were closed down, which was a considerable amount, and now have also borrowed a large number of books, audiobooks, CDs, and DVDs just in case the library system has to close down again.

Not being able to make weekly library visits was the only part of the self-quarantine that I've really hated. Having my husband and children home more has been great. When we've felt claustrophobic, we've just taken long walks or a ride somewhere in the car.

As long as I have access to library materials, I don't mind being an involuntary homebody. Life without the library, however, was unpleasant. Until this time, I'd never gone more than a week or two without a library visit. Nearly three months without a trip to the library was truly horrible.

But, hey, compared to contracting coronavirus, life without libraries is nothing really to complain about. I don't want to sound like a whiner. I'm just very, very, very grateful our libraries are back. Did I say I was grateful?

no more shaking hands

In every issue, Harper's magazine publishes their monthly index of random, interesting facts. This one caught my eye in their latest edition: "Portion of Americans who say they will still shake hands after COVID-19 has disappeared: 3/10."

This does not surprise me. I imagine numbers would be similar for the rest of the so-called first world.

Shaking hands is arguably one of the most unsanitary things we humans do in our daily lives. ho knows where that hand was before it touched yours? Does he or she wash hands after using the toilet? You don't have to spend much time thinking of all the unsanitary things that hand may have touched before touching yours.

At the end of the day, shaking hands is a silly custom. So let it go. Change for the better.

fashion and the plague

The Washington Post's fashion critic wrote an interesting article about how the rag trade was "broken" before the coronavirus crisis and how the pandemic has now completely upended the industry.

To that I say "good." Fashion had become absurd. It's time it was grounded again.

Post-plague, people aren't going to be interested in feather boas for daywear or seven-inch heels. They will want practical, affordable clothes and accessories for life in a pandemic hot zone.

A clutch purse in the shape of a grenade that's barely large enough to hold a small wallet will not be practicable in the age of plague. Women will want something where they can store a small bottle of sanitizer, wipes, gloves, and a mask that can all be easily reached.

Men and women will want fashionable, practical masks and gloves that look like part of an outfit and not something that makes you look like you work in a medical office.

Sure, some designers will continue to peddle impractical lines, at least in the short term. But I predict that won't last long. Like many aspects of our daily life, I predict fashion three to five years from now will be significantly different than it is now.

The era of frivolous is now officially over. Crap like the "fashion" seen below needs to die a quick death and now.

prickly prick

This clever cactus planter rendered me speechless. I'm simply at a loss for words. I'm sure there's a joke here somewhere, but I'm not funny enough to find it. That aside, I did laugh and laugh and laugh when I saw this. Enjoy.

armageddon eve

While looking through The Atlantic's archives, I happened on a fantastic article from a 1939 issue about how London felt immediately after most children were evacuated for the country in anticipation of the city being bombed.

The piece is beautifully written and has a lyrical, novelistic feel. I'd never heard of the writer, so I looked her up and learned she was quite prolific and, indeed, a novelist. She wrote at least fifty published novels and more than a dozen nonfiction books in addition to countless magazine articles.

If I had been a mother of young children in 1939 London, I don't think I could have sent them into the country with well-meaning strangers. I, too, would have insisted they leave but would have gone with them and encouraged my husband to do the same, as some families did. One arguably would be safest moving to a town some distance from any larger city where there was no defense manufacturing or production of any kind.

107 years old

The eighteen-minute documentary seen below is just lovely — a 107-year-old woman from Connecticut shares some simple life wisdom. She is amazingly sharp for her age. While she could never pass for sixty, she could probably pass for eighty-five years old if she wanted.

If I live to be 107, I would dearly love to be as with it as she is. Nonnie, you go girl!

64,000 green turtles

The world might be going to hell in a handbasket for humans, but if you're a green sea turtle, you couldn't be happier. The Sydney Morning Herald reported this week that the number of green sea turtles, a vulnerable species, found on their primary nesting island in Queensland is twice what scientists previously thought it would be.

This counting is possible thanks to drone photography that allows experts to more accurately tally the critters. So far, they have spotted up to 64,000 green turtles offshore Raine Island in far northern Queensland, which is Australia's northeastern state.

Presumably the turtles are oblivious to drones buzzing around overhead counting their numbers. They arguably don't even think about humans except possibly as a threat when in the immediate vicinity. Humans vastly overstate our importance in the big picture and the turtles could care less.

As you can see from the photo below (enlargement), the sea is jam packed with turtles waiting their turn to swim in and lay their eggs on the beach at Raine Island.

terrifying banking story

The newest issue of The Atlantic has an article about the possible collapse of the American banking system that's quietly terrifying.

"The U.S. financial system could be on the cusp of calamity. This time, we might not be able to save it," the piece begins.

If the American banking system implodes, as the article predicts could happen, I'd have to think that would cause a worldwide depression. That would mean lost jobs and lost homes for countless millions. And, as has happened with many economic meltdowns, that could lead to major wars pitting nation against nation.

As if we already didn't have enough to worry about.

one fell swoop

I've noticed our four-year-old pays more attention to language than his older brother did at his age. A case in point: yesterday I happened to use the phrase one fell swoop.

"Who fell?" he asked.

I tried to explain about idioms and how they used language in ways that made no sense literally. I think I helped him understand.

He didn't ask where one fell swoop came from but I realized I had no idea if he were to ask. The words in and of themselves make no sense together literally. So I looked it up.

It turns out, once again, to be a phrase bastardized from Shakespeare, specifically from Macbeth. Upon hearing his family has been killed, he says "All my pretty ones? Did you say all? O hell-kite? All? What, all my pretty chickens and their dam at one fell swoop?"

Here, a hell-kite refers to a type of bird of prey, specifically a kite (seen below). They coast in the air, then swiftly dive in a motion that looks more like they've fallen from the sky and swoop up their prey, flying away instantly.

deepfake porn

Vox is running and interesting feature with a video insert about how 96 percent of deepfake videos are porn of unsuspecting women. If you're not familiar with what a deepfake video is, it's the visual manipulation of a video to put Person One's face on top of Person's Two's face, so it appears One is performing acts that actually Two committed.

The most common form of deepfake videos are celebrity women's faces swapped with performers' faces in hardcore porn. The result is the video makes it appear like the celebrity did hardcore porn when, of course, she actually didn't.

The more your videos and photos featuring your face appear online, the more likely you will be a target because you're providing more resources for the deepfakers to work with. Thus, celebrities are easy targets because so much of their media can be found online.

Ergo, the solution to keeping your face off of deepfake porn is to share as little of your images and videos online as possible.

mysterious deep-space flashes

Astronomers have discovered a mysterious "fast radio burst" in deep space that blasts as much energy in a few milliseconds as our sun produces every century. And, mysteriously, the burst repeats itself every 157 days.

Several theories offering possible explanations links the phenomenon to neutron star activity. Whereas another posits that they're caused by advanced alien civilizations.

The latter explanation, of course, is the most dramatic. But it could also be the most frightening. Why?

Because if an ancient alien race could invent and construct a device that produces a century's worth of the sun's energy in only a few thousandths of a second, that is a race we humans should never hope to meet. Because they could crush our civilization and destroy us in, well, a matter of milliseconds.

Maybe the fast radio bursts are, indeed, some kind of death star in action. Scary.

the king's measles

If a king contracted the measles in 1824 and died in London, would that event have a direct impact on the outcome of the 2008 presidential election in the United States?

The answer is yes. In 1824, King Kamehameha II of Hawaii traveled to London to negotiate a military alliance between Great Britain and the Kingdom of Hawaii, then an independent country, in order to keep the United States in check.

While in London, however, the king contracted the measles and died. Like all Hawaiians of his era, he had no immunity to measles because it had never been experienced in the Pacific islands.

Because the king died, he was succeeded by his twelve-year-old son and the possible British military treaty was shelved. Hence, the United States was free to pursue Hawaii as an acquisition and formally annexed the islands in 1898. That led to an influx of Americans from the mainland, a trend that continues to this day. One of those Americans was Barack Obama's mother.

So if King Kamehameha II had not contracted the measles and died, then presumably the treaty would have been signed and the United States would never have annexed Hawaii. Barack Obama's mother would never have gone to the islands, where she met his father, and he thus would never have been born. Some other candidate would have won.

This interesting fact sequence I learned from a fascinating article in the current issue of The Atlantic about how disease and pandemics forever alter world history. I think this idea could be turned into a book, and given the article writer has already written some excellent books, hopefully he will do that.

The period print below from a British newspaper of 1824 shows King Kamehameha II and Queen Kamāmalu enjoying a night out on the town. Is this the same night he contracted his fatal illness?

low winter sun

The husband and I are halfway through watching Low Winter Sun, a gritty urban drama that lasted one season on AMC seven years ago before being cancelled. The program is now packaged as a limited series of ten episodes.

I had heard about the program on fan pages for the acclaimed HBO series The Wire, which I've seen all seasons of several times through. James has seen all episodes through once.

Some compared Sun to Wire, and it's an apt description. If anything, it's bleaker, grimmer, and darker than The Wire. It's also more focused on primarily two sets of characters: up-and-coming criminals and cops in a Detroit homicide squad.

The acting is uniformly excellent. The look of the program is fantastic. The writing is strong and fresh. Like Wire, the program has moments of great empathy for certain characters.

Needless to say, we're both liking the program quite a lot. AMC cancelled it because it never found an audience. Why I do not know. Perhaps because AMC's hits at the time were programs like Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and The Walking Dead, which were grim but also with a humorous side that Sun lacks.

So if you like dark, edgy, grimy TV series, check out Low Winter Sun.

truly scary shit

The popular perception about the coronavirus seems to be that a small percentage of people will be made very sick and may die — mostly the elderly — whereas the rest of the people who contract the disease won't suffer much and recover pretty quickly. I've seen this repeated all over social media in one form or another.

The reality is that coronavirus is a crap shoot and some horrible things can happen to people who appear not to be too ill at first and aren't elderly. I already wrote in April about younger people suffering from terrible blood clotting and strokes.

An article now running in The Atlantic tells another horror story about coronavirus and the non-elderly — if you come down with it, you could be sick as a dog for months.

And this is not just a few people. These long-term sufferers number in the thousands, as evidenced by their posting on social media.

Truly scary shit. It reminds me once again to err on the side of caution. The coronavirus is still only partly understood by medical and scientific experts. Hence, acting based on presumptions that it's like other illnesses is indeed foolish.

Be careful. Your life may depend on it.

bug zapper girl

The husband and I have snarky nicknames for some of our neighbors that we only use in private. He came back home a little while ago and said "I saw Bug Zapper Girl."

This nickname originated when, about a year ago at a neighborhood barbecue, she rather loudly declared that she thought bug zappers were cruel and should be outlawed. Her remark was met with about ten seconds of silence and then people resumed their conversations.

How do you respond to something so incredibly stupid?

I am an animal lover. So is my husband. But that love does not extend to all living creatures, particularly to household pests that can carry disease.

And what more humane way to kill insects than a zapper? They make contact and are instantly destroyed. There is no slow, agonizing death like can happen with insecticides. What better way to kill them?

investing hypocrisy

I believe I've mentioned here before that I would never buy shares of stock in a tobacco company. I've never smoked and think tobacco companies are acting immorally by selling a product they know to be harmful. So even though they pay a good dividend, I will not buy tobacco shares.

I do own so-called big pharma and big oil stocks. While both industries have done some bad things, they also provide a social benefit, unlike tobacco companies. I have also freely used products produced and sold by big pharma and big oil.

On an investment forum I sometimes visit, one user got in another's face for the latter's investment in oil stocks. The scold went on and on about how they were immoral, producing a filthy product, blah blah blah.

So the slighted person asked the scold a simple question: what kind of vehicle do you drive? The answer: a hybrid, meaning it does use some petroleum product.

So the slighted person said the scold was being a hypocrite for chastising others about investing in a product or or she uses regularly. But but but, the scold tried to qualify.

If you use a product, then you are endorsing that product no more nor no less than the person who invests in a company making that product. Bitching at someone for investing in an industry while you use the industry's product is nothing short of hypocritical.

the corona vaccine

New poll results show that seven in ten Americans would get a coronavirus vaccination when they become available if free while three in ten would not. If they aren't free, presumably that "yes" vote drops to a certain degree.

I have not seen a similar survey for other first would countries. I suspect there the percentage of "yes" choices would be above the United States, given wider acceptance abroad.

I find it baffling that thirty percent would not get immunized, even if free. That's like people declining a free airline upgrade that would guarantee the plane will not crash.

Yes, the older you are, the greater your risk. But that doesn't mean you're without risk at any age and can throw caution to the wind.

To summarily ignore silence while concurrently embracing some wild conspiracy theory about a vaccination is mind boggling. People rush to embrace the irrational while being proudly contemptuous of the rational.

It's understandable one might wait a few weeks or even months when the vaccine goes into wide use, to make sure reality matches clinical trials. But to turn your back on something that might save your life is nothing short of idiotic.

people are masturbating more

In what will come as a surprise to no one, a recent survey shows that people staying in because of the virus are masturbating more. It's almost as popular as quarantine baking.

No word, however, as to how many people are masturbating while something is baking in the oven.

About a fifth of quarantine masturbators are doing it "virtually," which can mean anything from old-fashioned phone sex to doing it on a live video feed for each other. Presumably some of these are groups of more than two.

I imagine those staying in are also bonking more, if they live with a spouse or a partner. I also imagine we'll start to see a spike in the birthrate in late 2020 and early 2021.

Hopefully no one will name any resulting children "Corona."

the vintner

One of my favorite cousins said in an email that another cousin of ours, whom neither of us have much cared for, decided he was going to try winemaking. So he bought a whole bunch of grapes, juiced them, then completed the winemaking process. Once that was done, he bottled his finished product.

After a few weeks on his cellar shelves, however, he discovered he had not made wine. He had made bombs.

Now, every few days, a bottle explodes. He and his wife are afraid to go into the cellar for fear one of the bottles will go off and they'll be hit by flying glass. So instead of using their washer and dryer in the cellar, they've been going to a laundromat.

About half of the bottles have exploded so far. My cousin peeks down from the top of the steps to see how many whole bottles remain. Now he and his wife have a new dilemma — what do they do if all the bottles don't explode? Do they risk going downstairs, fearful that vibrations will cause the bottles to blow?

Part of the reason neither of us have much cared for this cousin is because he always was such a know-it-all. When it comes to winemaking, however, he clearly does not know it all.