Author: The Hinoeuma
Christmas Countdown 4.0
I guess the Home Alone house looked like this. I don’t recall. ~Vic
12-01-2023
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@ Christmas Countdown 2023
Countdown 3.0
Christmas Countdown 3.0
I guess this is the house, minus the tree? It’s adorable, anyway. ~Vic
12-01-2023
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@ Christmas Countdown 2023
Countdown 2.0
Christmas Countdown 2.0
I thought this was really cute. I have had fur-babies all of my life, whether on my own or with family. I’ve even had a pet white lab rat named Herman. He was fun. ~Vic
12-01-2023
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@ Christmas Countdown 2023
Countdown 1.0
Christmas Countdown 2023
Yes. I have been gone for a while. I have been extremely busy with my significant other’s health issues…and my own. It is what it is. ~Vic
Back in 2020, I did a fifteen-day Christmas Countdown. Christmas 2021, I was busy with the Song Draft I was involved in from July to November. Plus, Christmas 2021 just sucked. Christmas 2022 wasn’t much better. I will do another “countdown” this year. Our small town likes to do gingerbread homes and scenes. Most of the time, kids are building these things but, some families work together. Some of these are impressive.
12-01-2023
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12-01-2023
@ Christmas Countdown 2023
NOTD: Shark Statue Dumped Into Swiss Lake
If you fancy swimming with the sharks without the worry of them taking a chunk out of you, a dip in Lake Neuchâtel would be ideal. Lurking in the depths of the murky water is a terrifying shark statue that’s been scaring divers half to death in Switzerland. The monstrous model sports a truly chilling grin that flashes every inch of its huge jaws while its pectoral fins look as though they are in flight mode. So, it’s no wonder those poor divers have been startled. The shark statue sits at the bottom of the lake in Romandy and appears to be floating, thanks to its supporting structure. It has been suggested that it was dumped there by a prankster, keen to convince locals the film Jaws is actually real. Their stunt hasn’t been doing a bad job at that either, as it’s forced a host of divers to do a panicked double take. Footage of a gang of underwater explorers coming across the petrifying prop has been doing the rounds on social media. [P]eople have been left in stitches by the creativeness of the alleged mischief maker. Then, again, it would hardly have the same effect if you parked it at a bus stop, would it? Sleuths on Reddit somehow managed to recognise the shark and said it was used as a prop in the film Choc au Lac! It is featured in one of the scenes from the 1975 movie, which was created by a group of 176 kids from Neuchâtel. The flick was, of course, about a giant shark that [terrorized] the town but, was unfortunately never finished.
[Even] the amateur detectives on Reddit can’t work out how the shark statue made its way down to the bottom of the lake. It is suspected that the 20ft long replica, made of [fiberglass], was probably dumped in the lake as a prank. Other theories include that it was put there as an unofficial tourist attraction or to create a hype for the unfinished film. To be fair, it has become a hot-spot for divers who want to see how scary it actually is, in the flesh, since 2002. Social media users haven’t been as enthusiastic about taking a trip down to the depths, even if it is just a statue.
One said: “Good thing the water is so murky so nobody can see me s**t my pants.”
Another wrote: “Now, imagine being the first dude that came across this.”
A third added: “This picture makes me feel sick to my stomach, like, visceral fear inside me is telling me to run as far as I can.”
Others were more intrigued by the elaborate plan behind abandoning the shark [in the lake], nicknamed Bruce by locals, .
Someone said: “I can’t tell if I want to shake the hand of whoever made it or run away from them.”
Another added: “What sick f**k thought this was a good idea?!”
At least you now know that thing whipping around your legs in Lake Neuchâtel is just a prop. Or is it?
Divers Given Scare
Olivia Burke
LadBible
News of the Day
Wayback Wednesday: Invasion Of Grenada 1983
Getty Image
Phil Kukielski
IINSTP
Forty years ago, today…this happened during my senior year of high school. I remember it well. I also enjoyed Heartbreak Ridge in 1986, even though the scene with the pay telephone and the credit card call for fire support, that actually happened, was the 82nd Airborne Division, not the Marines. ~Vic
The United States Invasion of Grenada began at dawn on October 25, 1983. The United States and a coalition of six Caribbean nations invaded the island nation of Grenada, 100 miles north of Venezuela. Code-named Operation Urgent Fury by the U.S. military, it resulted in military occupation within a few days. It was triggered by the strife within the People’s Revolutionary Government, which resulted in the house arrest and execution of the previous leader, [the] second Prime Minister of Grenada, Maurice Bishop, [leading to] the establishment of the Revolutionary Military Council, with Hudson Austin as chairman. The invasion resulted in the appointment of an interim government, followed by elections in 1984.
Wikipedia Summary
Grenada gained independence in 1974. Maurice Bishop became [Prime Minister] as a result of a coup in 1979 and, he had pursued left-wing policies with Soviet and Cuban aid since then. In Washington, D.C., he was seen as a communist collaborator and a new airport under construction in Grenada was deemed a transfer point for weapons destined for Latin American revolutionaries. Bishop’s assassination, by a more hard-line Military Revolutionary Council on October 19, 1983, was taken as the signal to act. Publicly justified by the need to protect U.S. students in Grenada, Operation Urgent Fury was hastily thrown together. The only resistance was likely to come from a contingent of Cubans, claimed to be construction workers by Havana.
♦ The Invasion of Grenada (The History Guy/April 20, 2019)
♦ Operation Urgent Fury: The 1983 US Invasion of Grenada (War History Online/Nikola Budanovic/December 2, 2017)
♦ How Grenada Reshaped The US Military (Informal Institute For National Security Thinkers & Practitioners/Phil Kukielski/September 8, 2013)
US Invades Grenada AP Archive
Heartbreak Ridge Trailer
VOTD: Talking Cats
I don’t remember where I got this but, it is dated 2007. I think I also saw this on AFV. I always laugh, watching this. ~Vic
Video of the Day
Shutterbug Saturday: Dunnagan Trail Loop
This is a re-post from March 2019. I needed to update. I didn’t have any watermarks on my work. Part two will be later. ~Vic
Images from March 12, 2019
03-07-1826 to 01-06-1914
We were on a two-mile hike.
Dunnagan Trail (Eno Trails)
Dunnagan’s Trail (All Trails)
Dunnagan North (Trail Forks)
Dunnagan Trail Hike 2017 (Not My Video)
Wear Something Gaudy Day
I have not done a National or Celebration Day since July 2020. I routinely do well-known Holidays but, I am putting these back in rotation. Enjoy! ~Vic
Today, October 17, is Wear Something Gaudy Day.
Ever wish there was more than one day a year where you could take all the conventions of proper dress and throw them out the window? Wish no more! Wear Something Gaudy allows you to let all your best examples of excruciatingly bad taste hang out for the world to see. Obviously, the best way is to choose something that is utterly without taste or fashion to wear but, that isn’t the only way. You can find your way to thrift stores to locate out of date fashions that are rarely seen out and about today and, put together an ensemble designed to shock and appall. Even throwing on a eye-searing boa can be a simple way to celebrate or you can just wear colors that clash. Everyone has pieces in their wardrobe that just don’t go, so, get in there and make peoples eyes waggle!
Wear Something Gaudy Day first came into existence through the 1970s sitcom Three’s Company, which was based on a British TV show called Man About the House. In the show, Larry Dallas, played by Richard Kline, is a used car salesman and flashy womanizer who frequently lies about his identity. True to his character, he proposed Wear Something Gaudy Day as a way to celebrate outlandish fashion. The holiday didn’t catch on immediately but, over time, California natives began celebrating it in their tackiest outfits.
[Contrary] to popular belief, the term gaudy does not come from the Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi. Etymologists have traced the usage of the word to the 16th century, well before Gaudi’s time. At that time, the word was used to refer trickery.
Have you ever wondered why dress shirts or jackets have sleeves on their cuffs? It’s actually because of Napoleon. He got tired of watching his soldiers wipe their noses on their sleeves, so he had their jackets equipped with buttons.
WOTD: Incarnadine
It’s a pretty word, written and meaning but, I’m at a loss for a sentence to make with it. I’d never heard of it, before today. Learn something new, everyday. ~Vic
Word of the Day
Flick Friday: Friday The Thirteenth 1933
I got lucky, today and found a Friday The 13th movie that had nothing to do with Jason or Camp Crystal Lake. Ninety years, ago, Friday The Thirteenth was released in the UK, at some point in November of 1933. The movie opened in New York on May 14, 1934. Curiously, this movie seems more science-fiction than spook. ~Vic
Directed by Victor Saville, produced by Michael Balcon and written by Sidney Gilliat, George Moresby-White, & Emlyn Williams, it starred Jessie Matthews, Sonnie Hale, Muriel Aked, Cyril Smith, Richard Hulton, Max Miller and, Alfred Drayton.
Photo Credit: IMDb & Amazon
It is pouring with rain at one minute to midnight on Friday the thirteenth and the driver of a London bus is peering through his blurred windshield as his vehicle sails down an empty road. Suddenly, lightning strikes and a vast crane above topples into the path of the oncoming bus. Then, Big Ben begins to wind backwards. Time recedes and we discover the lives of all of the passengers, and the events that brought them to that late-night bus journey, from the con man with a hundred pound cheque to the businessman’s distraught elderly wife. Time flows on, inevitably, to the crash and past it, as some live and some die.
IMDb Storyline
The complicated lives of twelve people travelling on a bus are traced up to the point when the bus crashes into a shop, killing two of the passengers.
BFI Screen Online
In London, near midnight, as a rain storm rages, several people travel across the city on a bus. Of the passengers, one elderly woman seems anxious and upset, a young man who has just been robbed by a pickpocket gratefully accepts money for his fare from another passenger, another man boasts of his knowledge of art, and a young woman angrily destroys a photo of a man. When a lightning strike causes the bus to crash, each passenger recalls what brought them on the ill-fated journey.
Rotten Tomatoes Movie Info
After a London bus crash leaves two people dead and several injured, the clock is turned back twenty-four hours to show the lives of the bus passengers, how they happened to be on that bus at that time, and the effect of the crash upon their lives.
TCM/AFI Synopsis
♦ AllMovie Synopsis (Hal Erickson)
♦ Review: Friday The Thirteenth (1933) (Comet Over Hollywood/Jessica Pickens/April 13, 2018)
You can watch the entire movie on the Internet Archive HERE.
Music Monday: T’ain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do 1923
Digging around in Tsort, I was looking for something in 1923 in October. I was not disappointed. T’ain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do was published, originally, in 1922 by Porter Grainger and Everett Robbins, according to the Encyclopedia of the Blues. It was first recorded by an Anna Myers with the Original Memphis Five.
Other recordings were done by Alberta Hunter, Sara Martin and Billie Holiday but, Bessie Smith did her own take.
The most popular of the classic blues singers was Tennessee-born Bessie Smith, who first recorded in 1923. Known as the Empress of the Blues, she possessed a large voice. Smith had toured on the T.O.B.A. circuit since 1912, originally as a chorus girl. By 1918, she was appearing in her own revue in Atlantic City, New Jersey. She struggled, initially, to be recorded. Three companies turned her down before she was signed by Columbia. She eventually became the highest-paid black artist of the 1920s and recorded over 160 songs. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989, she is often regarded as one of the greatest singers of her era and was a major influence on fellow blues singers, as well as jazz vocalists.
Wikipedia Summaries
With a theme of freedom of choice, some of the lyrics are pretty tough. Per Tsort, this was the top song for a week per US Billboard 9, October 1923. In 1928, guitarist Frank Stokes recorded a country blues version. In 1947, jump blues singer Jimmy Witherspoon did a version titled Ain’t Nobody’s Business, reviving the song and it was the best selling record of 1949. Hank Williams, Jr. recorded his own version of the song for his 1990 album Lone Wolf, peaking at #15 on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart. In 1996, a version by H2O, featuring Billie Piper got to #19 on the UK Singles chart. ~Vic
The B.B. King Reader: Six Decades of Commentary
Ain’t Nobody’s Business (The Blues Foundation)
NOTD: Taylor Swift Amnesia
Many Swifties are experiencing a post-concert “blank space.” Fans of international pop star Taylor Swift have reported a lack of memory after attending Eras Tour concerts, with some saying they’re even forgetting chunks of her performance. Experts at Hackensack Meridian Health in New Jersey researched why concertgoers are experiencing blackouts after their big night out. Dr. Nathan Carroll, associate chief resident psychiatrist at Hackensack Meridian Jersey Shore University Medical Center, linked the memory loss after concerts to a neurological condition called transient global amnesia (TGA).
“TGA is a rare phenomenon impacting memory,” the researcher told Fox News Digital. “Individuals who experience TGA will attend an event, like a concert, wedding or festival and, later, report undeniable gaps in their memory,” he said. “This type of memory loss is different from normal forgetfulness,” Carroll said. “For example, during the event, it may look like you’re acting normally and answering questions but, later, you may not recall some of your conversations,” he said. “Unlike other amnesias, memory loss is very limited, only lasting about a day and, people don’t forget [autobiographical] information.” TGA can develop due to elevated blood pressure, strenuous physical activity and emotional excitement, which Carroll said are all “theorized to temporarily impair the functioning of the memory center of our brain, the hippocampus.” “What’s interesting is that the concertgoers are only recognizing the memory loss post-event,” he said. “They actually experience TGA during the event but don’t realize it at the time.”
What Is Taylor Swift Amnesia?
Angelica Stabile
Fox News
October 7, 2023
So, concertgoers are experiencing undeniable gaps in their memories. Poor Taylor. All that work to entertain and no one remembers seeing her perform. It brings a tear to me eye. ~Vic
News of the Day
Cosmic-Observation 