The Periphery of the Mind

An interesting look at American Halloween costumes from the 1890s through the 1960s. Christmas costumes, patriotic costumes, trippy vampire get ups, all kinds of stuff. Some really neat ideas, and some of those old costumes are much more menacing than the slasher-gore plastic mass produced today.

Phyllis Galembo: Dressed for Thrills

Makes me curious to see the full book she has of these costumes.

The Boys. These pics were taken about 2 weeks ago, so they've grown some since. Aslan in particular is doing much better now. This pic was taken before Maryanne's infamous kitten juggling bit.

Just kidding.

Or am I?



Pee Wee is the eating machine and bully of the two.



Aslan is the more resourceful of the two.

I -think- everything is set and in the final steps except for a few things.

• Pick up my tux.
• Work on vows.
• Clean house.
• Clean Black Betty for the getaway.
• Possibly get tux for Buddha-thulu to wear, while sitting on Black Betty's dashboard.

The wedding shower was yesterday, and I was fortunate enough to get to skip it. Taking care of two kittens is hard work.

So after finding Peewee, Laurissa found another kitten and a dead momma' cat in the road. The second kitten was pretty bad. He had gunked eyes, and a pair of bites taken out of him. That was about a week or so ago. Today Peewee and Aslan are doing good. They're becoming house broken, and just starting to get weaned from the bottle. I think they're even learning their names.

I can handle two kittens I think.

It's the two kittens and Maryanne's adult cat that I'm afraid will lead to feline allergy overload.

Hopefully I'll post photos soon.

Seems we have a kitten now. Laurissa, one of Maryanne's sisters, found a three-week old kitten by the side of the road outside her house. He was fairly starved, and looked to have some damage to his claws. He's eating formula mixed into canned food pretty well, and is supposed to be going to the vet today or tomorrow for a checkup.

Okay, as of last night we're registered at Wal-Mart as well.

Don't ask me, I was just told this morning.

Okay, a tux has been picked out. I guess it looks good, but I didn't bother to look in the mirror since I only got to try on the jacket. So really, I have no idea what it's going to look like. We're to talk with the JOP Tuesday after next, and I guess figure out a time to go over vows and such. At this point, that's about the only part of the planning left I'm concerned about. I'll be handling dinner at the rehearsal, but it's a lower priority to me than what the vows cover.

http://www.milkandcookies.com/links/35404/

A Japanese TV clip of a street performer disguised as an old man. Actually worth watching all five minutes!

Maryanne and I had planned on going to Tulsa this weekend, but between gas shortages and price spiking, the idea of taking a fun day trip seemed kind of wasteful. Instead we stayed home, cleaned house, bought some -nice- living room furniture on the cheap, started church hunting, and had a small cook-out last night. Grilled some more marinated chicken, made some so-so bread, and fixed up some smoothies as well. There were a couple of other dishes, but they were pre-made stuff, and don't count. Once we get a kitchen table set, and the garage cleaned, it'll really feel like home.

And for those who are interested, my great experiment of the weekend....

D.J.'s Strawberry Smoothies

• 5 parts frozen strawberries
• 3 parts -lightly- frozen yoghurt
  
• 2 parts orange juice
• 1 part milk
• add sugar to taste

Put it all in a blender, blend completely, and serve immediately.

If you go to one of the real estate sites and do a search by MLS number, mine is 446275. That said, there are no pictures, the house is the wrong size, and the city is misleading. Still, it's up, and it's getting done!

I suspect once the pictures are up and the size fixed, then I'll get calls to come out and look at the place.

When I first made this page I wanted it to be a stimulus for creative thought and random ranting. And while I've managed to somehow provide it with a regular stream of ranting it seems that creative thought, or any thought really, has been sadly lacking.

Lately I've been looking around and seeing what other people have been doing with their blogs, and decided I'd like to try some of that. So, with that in mind, I set up a secondary blog where I'm going to try and post 5 entries a week; ideally one post per working day, but otherwise five per week. These pieces will be little vignettes of fiction and fantasy, inspired by the likes of Umberto Eco, Kurt Busiek, and Rebecca Bergstrom. I find the idea of doing vignettes interesting. Individually they are short and simple, and can trigger ideas in the reader. Collectively they can form the basis for entire worlds. So basically I get to write an entire novel's worth of work, in the most lazy and disorganized way possible.

All that said, I'll still post what's going on in my life, and things I find interesting, here.

Apparently there's a species of shrimp that generates bursts of plasma and small sonic bombs when it clicks it claws together. I want those genes!

http://stilton.tnw.utwente.nl/shrimp/

And scientists have discovered an orca that not only learned to set a trap to catch sea gulls, but somehow managed to teach its trap-technique to its pod members.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2005-09-01-whale-gulls_x.htm