International Weblogger’s Day, also known as InWeDay, is celebrated on June 14 every year. This unofficial holiday was created to bring together bloggers from around the world and, to promote blogging as a way to express yourself and engage in dialogue with people from different countries and backgrounds.
A blog (short for “weblog“) is an online diary consisting of discrete, often informal entries called posts. Most blogs are primarily textual but, they may include other types of content such as images, videos, music and audio.
The term “weblog” was coined [by Jorn Barger] in 1997 [December 17] and its short form, “blog“, was first used [by Peter Merholz when he playfully broke the word into “we blog“] in 1999. That same year, Pyra Labs launched Blogger, one of the first blog-publishing platforms that allow users to create and run blogs for free without any programming background.
In 2004, around 500 bloggers from over 40 countries supported the idea of creating a holiday that would unite blogging enthusiasts from around the world. The inaugural International Weblogger’s Day was held on June 14, 2004. On the occasion of the holiday, bloggers write special posts for their online diaries. In some cities, special meetings are organized where bloggers can meet “offline”.
Unfortunately, the popularity of International Weblogger’s Day has decreased considerably over the recent years.
These shots were taken by my buddy and childhood friend, Hank…well, most of them. I grabbed the camera a couple of times. He shared these with me but, the copyright is all his. This was my first motorcycle rally and the first time I’d laid eyes on Hank in 20+ years. It was such a fun time and reunion and, the only time I have ever seen Joan Jett, live. “ROT” is short for “Republic of Texas”. The Rally suffered quite a bit during the plandemic and lost its regular venue in Austin. They are trying to make a comeback. ~Vic
My Buddy HankHank’s Harley
(in the center)So Many MotorcyclesBig Ol’ TrikeShooting FlamesJoan Jett Concert ScreenWorn OutNight LightsBlue & Green GlowPolaris Slingshot Prototype?Yep. This is me…several pounds heavier than today.
Notice my cute, pink Motorola flip-phone…
and my Marine Corps gear.
I was still issued to the Jarhead back then.
Generations of reference books once included this term, including the first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, dated 1771 […]
James Murray, the famous editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, found that the original word was bycoket, which was indeed a form of headgear, a cap or headdress with a peak both in front and behind, whose name he thought derived from an Old French term for a small castle crowning a hill. He declared abacot to be a ghost word and wrote in an article in [T]he Athenaeum in February 1882:
“There is not, never was, such a word.”
His entry for abacot in the first edition of the OED read in its entirity [sic] “a spurious word found in many dictionaries, originating in a misprint of bycoket.” In the bycoket entry, he told the story:
Through a remarkable series of blunders and ignorant reproductions of error, this word appears in modern dictionaries as abacot. In Hall’s Chronicles a bicocket appears to have been misprinted abococket, which was copied by Grafton, altered by Holinshed to abococke, and finally “improved” by Abraham Fleming to abacot (perhaps through an intermediate abacoc) […]
One may instead argue that since the word has — albeit rarely — been used, then it exists and ought to be treated as such. There is, after all, no shortage of words that have been grossly altered through popular error. The revision of its entry in the Oxford English Dictionary in December 2011 takes this view […]
Shot on location in Cambodia, including many scenes in actual brothels in the notorious red light district of Phnom Penh, “Holly” is a captivating, touching and emotional experience. Patrick, an American card shark and dealer of stolen artifacts, has been ‘comfortably numb’ in Cambodia for years when he encounters Holly, a 12-year-old Vietnamese girl in the K-11 red light village. The girl has been sold by her impoverished family and smuggled across the border to work as a prostitute. Holly’s virginity makes her a lucrative prize and, when she is sold to a child trafficker, Patrick embarks on a frantic search, through both the beautiful and sordid faces of the country, in an attempt to bring her to safety. Harsh, yet poetic, this feature forms part of the ‘K-11’ Project, dedicated to raising awareness of the epidemic of child trafficking and the sex slavery trade through several film projects. The film’s producers endured substantial hardships in order to be able to shoot in Cambodia and have also founded the Redlight Children Campaign, […] a worldwide grassroots initiative generating conscious concern and, inspiring immediate action against child sex-ploitation.
Trivia Bits:
♦ Tom Sizemore was originally slated to play Freddie but, after being arrested for failing several drug tests, he was dropped from the production and replaced by Chris Penn.
♦ This was one of Chris Penn’s last films.
Gore Vidal: […on Truman’s voice…] “To the lucky person who has never heard it, I can only say…imagine what a brussel sprout would sound like, if a brussel sprout could talk.”
Truman Capote: […on Smith & Hickock…] “When you’re talking to them, they seem like perfectly nice boys. To be frank, I’m much more concerned for my safety around Norman Mailer.”
This is the second movie on Truman Capote regarding his foray into the Clutter Family murders. Released August 31, 2006, at the Venice Film Festival and widely on October 13, 2006, this film stood in the shadow of Philip Seymour Hoffman‘s Capote and his Academy Award for Best Actor. Unlike its predecessor, this film, with its $13 million budget, lost money. That being said, despite Hoffman’s turn, Toby Jones is no slouch and his interpretation has its own unique depth. Jones was awarded the London Critics’ Circle Film Award for British Actor of the Year. I found this film to be fascinating and quite entertaining, with parts difficult to watch. Bubbly Sandra Bullock brings forth the subdued, Southern To Kill A Mockingbird novelist Harper Lee. Much of the storytelling is done in mock interviews with the actors, in character, talking about their interactions with Truman. I seem to have a thing for underdog/obscure movies. ~Vic
“Why shouldn’t there be a fizzy, comedic take on the naughty adventures of the Park Avenue gadabout as he fashioned In Cold Blood […]? Why not a movie that concentrates on the contrast between the writer’s frivolous party-boy side and the brutal murders in Kansas, the exotic and colorful tropical specimen who becomes a fish-out-of water when he jumps from his luxurious high-rise swan pond into the Midwestern plains?
[A]fter In Cold Blood, [Capote] never published another major work. Out of career desperation as much as anything else, he sold out his friendships with these […] people, publishing gossipy stories about them in an Esquire excerpt from Answered Prayers in 1976 and was banished from their lives.
[T]he movie centers on the symbiotic relationship between Truman and Perry, pondering the extent of the seduction and, who seduced whom.
Toby Jones inhabits Truman as if he were to the character born, a livelier and more perversely ebullient man than Phillip Seymour Hoffman‘s version in Capote (2005).”
“Oh, it’s Friday night. Let’s run tonight, ’til the morning light…”
Returning to my Samsung playlist, this Sunday’s submission is Keep On Runnin’ by American rock band Journey, formed in San Francisco in 1973 out of former members of Santana and Frumious Bandersnatch. The fourth track from the album Escape (released in July 1981), it was co-written by Jonathan Cain, Steve Perry and Neal Schon and, was never released as a single, though the album, itself, reached #1 on the Billboard 200 on September 12, 1981. The song does show up in the Journey video game from Bally Midway, that came out in March of 1983, with this tagline (one of three):
“The hottest band in the country is about to take over the planet!”
The album got its own Atari 2600video game in 1982. This album, and Frontiers after it, is a musical tapestry to my high school years.
San Antonio/Selma, TX July 2006
Co-Headliner Def Leppard
I got to see the band in concert, twice, in Texas and was lucky enough to get to meet them. This is the tour where Journey dropped Steve Augeri and picked up Jeff Scott Soto for a year. Neither could match Perry but, Augeri was close.
I’m on the far left next to Jonathan Cain. My buddy Monica is in between Cain & Neal Schon. My buddy Amy is in between Deen Castronovo & Ross Valory.
I did a Harvest Moon post last year and, once again, I can’t get any pix of tonight’s moon. We have an incredible low ceiling and I haven’t seen the sun all day. On a positive note, a low ceiling makes sound travel farther and I can hear the local high school football game from three miles away. The last time there was a full moon on Friday the 13th, it was January of 2006 and it wasn’t here. Technically, my area won’t be full illumination until 12:33am EDT but, the rest of the country, westward…Jason might turn into a werewolf.
I DO have some shots from September 15, 2016, tho, taken with my, then, Samsung S5.
September’s Full Moon was called the Full Corn Moon or Harvest Moon by the early North American Farmers. The term “Harvest Moon” refers to the Full Moon that occurs closest to the Autumnal Equinox. The Full Moon closest to this Equinox rises about 20 minutes later each night as apposed to the rest of the year when the moon rises around 50 minutes later each night. In the northern hemisphere, the Full Harvest Moon rises very soon after sunset, providing plenty of bright light for farmers harvesting their summer crops. September’s full moon is so well-known for its luminosity and brilliance that certain Native American tribes even named it the Big Moon. The Full Harvest Moon holds major cultural significance in many different communities, who spend this full moon not just celebrating the fall harvest but, also, the moon itself.
The most widely known tradition associated with the Full Harvest Moon is the Mid-Autumn Festival, celebrated by Chinese communities all around the world. It is also known as the Mooncake Festival. On the full moon night of the eighth lunar month, people gather with friends and family to admire the brilliant full moon while eating mooncakes and drinking tea. Mooncakes are a rich pastry traditionally filled with sweet bean paste, or lotus seed paste, and sometimes, even include salted egg yolks. The sweet osmanthus flower also blooms during this time and, is often used in teas and the reunion wine drunk when visiting with family. It is a common tradition to celebrate by carrying brightly colored lanterns. [You] can often enjoy the beautiful sight of lanterns hanging in front of buildings or in parks, or sky lanterns floating towards the full moon.
The Japanese celebrate this full moon with the Tsukimi tradition (which literally means moon-viewing in Japanese), where people prepare offerings to the moon and eat round tsukimi dango, or rice dumplings. In Korea, this full moon is celebrated as Chuseok, which is one of Korea’s most major holidays, similar to Thanksgiving. People travel back to their hometowns for reunions with their family and tend to their ancestors’ graves. Traditional activities include exchanging gifts, playing folk games, drinking rice wine, and eating songpyeon, which is a rice cake shaped like a half-moon.
[The] Full Harvest Moon is called the Nut Moon by the Cherokee tribes, who gather all sorts of nuts to make nut bread, which is eaten during harvest festivals such as the Ripe Corn Festival. During this moon, Native American tribes pay respects to Mother Earth for her generosity in providing food for her children, including corn and other staple foods. Chinese communities, on the other hand, spend the Mid-Autumn Festival worshipping the Moon Goddess, Chang’e.
Just as I was creating this post, our clouds cleared. I got a couple of different shots as I was experimenting with my phone’s camera settings.
After 59 years, the iconic Route 66 enters the realm of history on this day in 1985, when the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials decertifies the road and votes to remove all its highway signs. Measuring some 2,200 miles in its heyday, Route 66 stretched from Chicago, Illinois to Santa Monica, California, passing through eight states. According to a New York Times article about its decertification, most of Route 66 followed a path through the wilderness forged in 1857 by U.S. Navy Lieutenant Edward Beale at the head of a caravan of camels. Over the years, wagon trains and cattlemen eventually made way for trucks and passenger automobiles.
The idea of building a highway along this route surfaced in Oklahoma in the mid-1920s as a way to link the state to cities like Chicago and Los Angeles. Highway Commissioner Cyrus S. Avery touted it as a way of diverting traffic from Kansas City, Missouri and Denver. In 1926, the highway earned its official designation as Route 66. The diagonal course of Route 66 linked hundreds of mostly rural communities to the cities along its route, allowing farmers to more easily transport grain and other types of produce for distribution. The highway was also a lifeline for the long-distance trucking industry, which by 1930 was competing with the railroad for dominance in the shipping market.
Route 66 was the scene of a mass westward migration during the 1930s, when more than 200,000 people traveled from the poverty-stricken Dust Bowl to California. John Steinbeck immortalized the highway, which he called the “Mother Road”, in his classic 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath. Beginning in the 1950s, the building of a massive system of interstate highways made older roads increasingly obsolete and, by 1970, modern four-lane highways had bypassed nearly all sections of Route 66. In October 1984, Interstate-40 bypassed the last original stretch of Route 66 at Williams, Arizona and, the following year, the road was decertified. According to the National Historic Route 66 Federation, drivers can still use 85 percent of the road and Route 66 has become a destination for tourists from all over the world.
Often called the Main Street of America, Route 66 became a pop culture mainstay over the years, inspiring its own song (written in 1947 [sic] by Bobby Troup, Route 66 was later recorded by artists as varied as Nat King Cole, Chuck Berry and The Rolling Stones) as well as a 1960s television series. More recently, the historic highway was featured prominently in the hit animated film Cars (2006).
I’ve been digging around in some old images on my computer. There was a rash of cube farm/office humor that circulated on emails back in the middle 2000s. They may have eventually made it to Facebook but, I don’t remember seeing these. Anyway, I thought I would share some silliness. These were labeled “Cutbacks” and someone went to a lot of trouble for the detail. I will hit you up with some more next Friday. They are not mine and I have no idea where they originated from.
Cardboard fridge.I love the cardboard CD.Even cardboard wrist rests.NOT a Bush/Cheney fan. Love the “Whatever, You Moron” bunny.Makeshift printers.And, a Dell chair.New power generation.
Fellow blogger Britchy at Bitchin’ In The Kitchen challenged all of her readers to join in. I could not resist this fun as I am a music nut. That being expressed, I sit on day six so, this first post is a catch-up. Tomorrow, I will join the normal festivities for day seven.
So, without further ado…here we go.
Day One
A song with color in the title.
Oh, my, my, my…this immediately popped into my head. This was released in 1983…my junior year of high school.
Little Red Corvette
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Day Two
A song with a number in the title. Black Lab appeared on the Alternative Rock scene in 1997 with their début album release Your Body Above Me. This song is particularly haunting to me and I could listen to Paul Durham sing all day long.
Ten Million Years
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Day Three
A song that reminds you of summer.
Dear Lord…the summer of 1984, the year I graduated. Myrtle Beach, alcohol & Prince. This was released ahead of the album Purple Rain‘s release and the movie of the same name. Have mercy… As a side note, Wendy in the background playing guitar in stockings and high-top tennis shoes is just bad ass.
When Doves Cry
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Day Four
A song that reminds you of someone you’d rather forget.
I love this song but, the person that it reminds me of…I wish I could rip them out of my head.
Set Fire to the Rain
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Day Five
A song that needs to be played loud.
Oh, yeah…also played extensively at the beach for graduation…the louder, the better. We wore out a cassette tape.
Fantasy
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Day Six
A song that makes you want to dance.
Honestly, this one is hard…too many to choose from. I will go with…
Say It Right
Thanks, Kristian for rolling the ball to Britchy. ~Vic
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Cosmic-Observation 