snow what? coming tommorrow...Toby snow footage.

yobosayo@flickr

Ah the snow; it is a funny thing...and many a historical moment was affected by said fluffy white stuff, such as:

Snow skiing dates back more than 6000 years...in Russia where the oldest set of skis were found. Written references come from Northern China, around 200 B.C.
Clumsy Carp and the Skinny Chick used skis to escape from rampant dinosaurs before the wheel was invented.
'In the early 1900s, skiers created their own terminology to describe types of snow, including the terms "fluffy snow," "powder snow," and "sticky snow." Later, the terminology expanded to include descriptive terms such as "champagne powder," "corduroy," and "mashed potatoes."'--from nsidc.org

George Washington crossed the Delaware River on 12-25-1776, mostly because of the blinding snow. Not far away the Delaware Memorial Bridge was open to foot traffic, but in retrieving mittens from coat the general spilled his change purse, so in any case wouldn't have been able to pay the toll.

Here is some Wild History on the snowman. Seems he started out innocently enough but eventually turned to drinking and smoking and eventually becoming “a tipsy snowman chasing a girl with a stick”...Oh, and then Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes began torturing them.

pic by veganbilly@flickr


Don't forget the Bumble. He's abominable!

The snow leopard picks up his dry cleaning in early October, lest the snows come early and he is caught out in the bright orange spotted suit.

A snow angel is described by Wikipedia as “a simple depression in snow in the shape of an angel.” That's about it. No history, no instructions, nothing. No picture, no links, no scantily clad snow angels holding bottles of beer, nothing. Scandalous!

Valdez, Alaska averages 326 inches of snow, annually. That's a lot o' snow!

It has snowed an inch in Phoenix, AZ twice, in the 1930's. And once, when I visited there, it snowed over spring break. The rooftops were white. It was a miserable week.

Snow is edible! But in urban areas it may be infected by SMOG (yuck)!! Sometimes snow may contain algae and will be red, and is said to taste sweet!

Snow flakes are commonly under a half inch in diameter, but can be as big as 2 inches. Does size matter?

Flingon's Wild Ride

The morning of Luminescent Glory
Perry Flingon flew his Spleener
into the mouth of a
falsetto Batwing Zephyr.
The trick he said was to
avoid rotationary cogs,
filed snarling teeth
that gnash indiscriminately.
A week ere the lovely event
he, P, kissed goodbye
his wife and twelve imminent children,
opting for obscurity in
a dust storm, maneuvering
haphazardly, employing a
hi-tech randomizer bought
with sponsor ducats.

Forcasted easily by forwarded
invert-vorti, the
hologramic Earl Finkel concluded
impending and disagreeable contact
with the Zephyr early in
the Luminescent Glory.
Families would surely
hold their warm peas for
a satisfying conclusion,
praying the Batwing would
conduct itself in a
tasteful manner—no Zephyr
had yet, and hopes of
a peaceful
peaflinging lay under a
thick gloom of sour
Nimbostratus.

This thing was
a done deal,
as donkey caped P. Flingon knew,
and no quantity of
trickery would save his giblets.
Still the Spleener performed
as designed and
with the flip engaged,
it engorged on carbon slick
then sprang to attention and flew.
Ahead the Zephyr bleated
out a loathsome challenge
that outraced the wind.

In pursuing years they remember
even holding their tongues
and pinching knees,
recalling the sacrifice of
P. Flingon and his reckless
decay in the mouth of
a penultimate Batwing Zephyr.
They will rejoice and chuck
their peas, they fling
fruit to the wind and
entwining fingers they sing out
to Flingon descendants,
the sacrificial family
to the encroaching Zephyrs,
the Batwings ever starving
for more in the season of
the Luminescent Glory.

Fat Rabbit

Here is a goofy little story that was written a few years ago...I used to think that nobody wanted to take the time to read more than a couple paragraphs at a time, but Otin changed my mind about that...if you have a few minutes, then enjoy:

BTW, i dedicate this to a Friend of mine, Peg,
who loved my stories and passed away earlier this year...i miss her and our Sunday morning canasta games.


Fat Rabbit bounced into the room like an old man deprived of his grouch hole, and demanded to be shown the King. Somehow, someone in the kingdom had stolen his hutch, and he had nowhere to retire to after eating lettuce and courting lady rabbits. "I'm sorry, Fat Rabbit, the king is busy, he's on the pot. Would you like to make an appointment?"

This announcement really steamed Fat Rabbit; he was one of those beasts of the kingdom with a very low tolerance for waiting around. Everything was hurry up quick, or just screw it, plop, flip, damn. And that's just about how he retorted to the news about the King standing him up for the pot! Fat Rabbit wasn't going to make any damned appointment, he was here now, and if that wasn't good enough for his highness, the bloody stupid King, than crap all over that, go ahead.

"Don't get all fat and rabbitty, you horny furball; after the pot there's just you and your cock-a-maimy grumping about what I don't know who cares, so do you want to wait two poopy seconds for a sit-down-and-wipe, or just bounce away all mipe and gripe about nothing and what will that solve nothing I guess who cares, not me. Stow it, rodent." With that the King's receptionist lit up a fat stogey and turned back to her typing, with her chubby fat webbed toady fingers. Fat Rabbit stared at her shapely neck, but not for long--it was all warty and swamp stained. Plus she smelled a bit like stale standing gloop-covered bog. All this rabbity thought process slowed Fat Rabbit's anger cells to ameba pudding swimming speed, and he hunched down in a corner of the waiting room and chewed moronically on a Welcome pamphlet.

Now, at the advanced age of the King (and he was a shell surrounded amphibian type--so he was unfast to start with) this small wait became advanced and was in fact longer than anticipated. A lot. The receptionist spurned Fat Rabbits hopeless advances, opting for her typewriter, and he orneryly turned his attention to chewing up many more leaflets and constructed quite a nice burrow for himself and perhaps some cozy liaison in the corner. If the squinchy toad couldn't be bothered, then perhaps some fine furry woodland creature might purposely or by some freak accident become lost in the woodland realm and perchance find herself wandering frantically into the King's foyer and become enamored with first fuzzy face met.

Sometime later the toady secretary jumped up from her mushseat and left unnoticed by Fat Rabbit, because he was laying backwards and upside down, drooling slightly like an oozing strawberry soaked shortcake and lazily pawing the air with his left back foot. The King, fresh off the pot, sauntered slowly in, like an overstuffed pastry chef on Superbowl Sunday--or like a turtle, which is more to the fact and true, too. The toady wart factory had clocked out and left no messages, so the King ambled on to his throne away from throne, and promptly retracted limbs, and retired for the rest of his life, this evening.

Fat Rabbit woke up, surrounded by his self made fluff, discovered it was dark, and made small rabbity noises. Whereupon the realization and self-awareness of his whereabouts, of which he was not sure, Fat Rabbit bolted from his nest, through the front gate and out into the yard, thus becoming a small, frightened bunny, out after dark in parts unknown. Up above the hare heard a hungry screeching shriek and the wind ruffled the fur on his back. With lightening rabbit reflexes, for he had come back to his senses finally, improving from his stupurous state, Fat Rabbit hopped and skipped with the fury of a furry cyclone back into the King’s palatial estate, and slammed the door behind his fluffy white tail.

With the commotion and thundering whoosh of a fast moving critter and slamming doors, the hard shelled King awoke with a start, his scaly green appendages popping out like cat eyeballs in a kennel full of frothing dogs. “Guards,” the King mumbled slurredly in his post-sleepy condition. When he came to his doddering senses and eyed Fat Rabbit backed up against the door holding out the horrors of the dark, he just said, “Oh poop, it’s just another of my royal subjects, no doubt here to air some dum-bass grievance. Take your sorry grouchy tail home, you hairy shmuck.” The King commenced with his imperial decree, and began to gently retract.

Fat Rabbit, breathing hard from his life threatening fast retreat and intrusions, spoke with no hesitation in his crazed patienceless hare-brained disconnected from his hare-necked in the presence of royalty sort of way. “If your all high and mighty Kingly butt hadn’t been plopped on the pooper all bloody day, my furry tail wouldn’t be stuck in your high brow brick house like this at the wee hours of the night, and all these screeching and swooping rabbit eating feather brain-eating beakers looking to eat me for lunch….Oh, moose nuggets!”

“I see,” replied the King, as he squinted hard down his wrinkly reptile nose at the carrot eater. “And if my toady secretary of state were here I’d have you thrown to the ‘beakers’ and watch the show with a cup of brandy and a cigar. But since her wartiness is away to her stinky mud hole like most woodland creatures should be at this frightening hour, your royal lordship will delight you with fine on-the-pot inspired poetry…for your listening pleasure. Now sit!” The King glared with menace at the hare, and Fat Rabbit, longing for home, lettuce and a harem of honeys, hunkered down into his shredded mess grudgingly resigned to his fate.

The ancient King sat, shell straight, in his ornate seat, and stretched his right arm flipper thingy as far as it would reach from its opening. Then he craned his long stringy neck down until his nose touched his arm and began to read the words he had scribbled there hours before as he sat pooping on the pot. “Poetry is so relaxing,” explained the King, “I find that the use of it smoothes the wrinkles and clears the mind. Right now there is nothing pressing, and if the walls of this house were falling down around us, all would be good and well and just fine. Such is the grand power of verse!” Fat Rabbit watched, as the King seemed to grow taller on his thrown, the old monarch’s eyes neatly glowing as the skies clear after a storm. And he was enthralled with the King’s words of tranquility; then the King began his recital.

“The rule of the king is herein told
For purposes, it all depends
Upon the need to whom it’s doled:
His kingly staff and citizens.

Beetles, worms and flitting things
Will turn the dirt and pollinate
And decorate my wall with wings;
Art and fertility their fate.

Birds will fly and drop the seeds
From nuts and berries they snack on
Which soon will flourish into trees
They’ll eat and poop some more upon.

Sluggish critters like the newt
And toads that merely take up space
Keep the fly and gnat more mute
And welcomed by the populace.

The turtle is the rightful king
Chose to rule the furred and fish,
Deciding on most everything
With his crown and scaly fist!

At last, the hare in droves abound
And census keepers toil and trek
Through the wood and all around
To help the wolves keep them in check.

“Hmmm. That’s all I’ve got for now. Do you think I ought to put in a line for the hawks? But no, they’re quite the rogues, such an unruly bunch….”

The King’s final words seemed awesomely to echo, to Fat Rabbits sensitive big floppy ears. Which was remarkable, until one realized that the King had begun to fall asleep with the anticipation of his ending lines, and his unbalanced crown-encircled nog seeped back into its resting place leaving just the points of his crown poking up like baby crocus on the early spring’s dewy lawn.

Fat Rabbit thought, “Bull spit!” Then he bounded from his corner nest, scattering chewed leaflets across the floor. He was just about to take his chances out of doors with the wolves and circling hooting beakers, as opposed to being subjected to more insufferable and telling kingly jewels, but his paw stayed upon the brass door handle…

After a healthy breakfast of crisp greens and sweet spring water, the King settled back into his seat, nicely padded now with fresh leaflet bedding. At the front door there was a snap of the bolt as the toady secretary let herself in and plodded wetly to her mushseat, resigned, but not eager, to while away another day of her short life in service to her king. Then the toad’s warty lips fell apart, and the gloppy tongue puddled out as her pop-eyes fell upon the King on his thrown.

“Hey there, sweets, fetch me another lap of this crick juice and fluff up this shredded mattress. And while you’re at it, roll that empty chewed out shell from the yard down to curb for recycling.” Then Fat Rabbit stretched his legs out and wondered what royal thoughts he might have later while vacationing on the pot.

Tom & Dinosaur Hand

Howdy all...here's another great Tom & Dinosaur Hand movie review!

Tom: Dinosaur Hand, did you have a nice Thanksgiving?
Dinosaur Hand: I remember something about a wine glass...?
Tom: Ah...yes. And the turkey and stuffing?
DH: Hiccup.
Tom: This week we watched The Island on DVD.
DH: Yes! OMG! Did you, can you, and the...Holy s***! ...oh gosh, aspirin please.
Tom: I think what you're trying to say is, a lot of action, car chases with
DH: death and destruction, bone crunching, buildings collapsing, flying jet skis, murder, punching, judo kicks, future stuff and more future stuff, Steve Buscemi, Scarlet Johansson—ooh--gunfire and tasers and lasers and outrage and intrigue and cover-up and...
Tom: Do you still need that aspirin?
DH: breath in, breath out.
Tom: My first reaction was..'oh no, another Micheal Bay film.' You know, all action action action. Blah. He directs a lot like John Wu. Not a whole lot of substance, just explosions and flying kicks and punches.
DH: Woo woo!
Tom: Other than a few incredibly impossible sequences I thought this was a pretty good film. I liked the future views—set about 50 years into the future-- and there was a car chase scene that was pretty awesome.
DH: Can you say train wheels?
Toby: woof. Woof woof woof. DH: No, train wheels, like this: tah ray na...
Tom: Dino, he can't pronounce 'train wheels', he's a dog.
DH: You didn't say we were gonna have a guest reviewer!
Tom: He just wandered in; don't worry, you aren't being replaced.
DH: *sigh of relief*
Toby: woof (can I have a froot loop?)

empty amphibious threats of the mushmeat kind

I do recall the
carbon dated frog
with a Greek lisp,
a prehensile velvet tongue
enveloped in a sweet
gravy fog of smarm.

In those days
of reverse sneezing--
systematic in lung
re-inflation to overcapacity--
we'd choose between
the lesser of
two reptiles,
the greater being elevated
to an obnoxious height
and often unobtainable;
this being the frog
with the forked tongue,
'it speaketh ill of thee
in closet quarters.'

In the blue corner then
the red cormorant
with repercussions
dressed in polypropylene
gave thanks and waived
all right to divine intervention,
instead serving up a hail Mary,
countered by an all enveloping
plague of minionites--
a horde of tiny,tailed tadpoles.

Humming scales the scarlet
seabird formulated a
punting committee coalescing
in a stalemate...
...and a reeking fury,
a scandalous
slurry of foul candorisms.
Retirement covered the
seditious frog's tracks
and to the back-end
of the future myth and rumor
unite,
giving way to feral fraud
and fellowship.

Thus we
break fast and consume
massive quantities.
Gather all and
say you tales of woe
and joice anew,
for the carbon dated frog
is away this day
unto you and say
'Hey! Let sleeping frogs lie.'

unapproachable

my pixels embellished for free

with Peruvian ornamentation

in hindsight gives me the willies.

Not because of the steaming coffee cup

or the llama or the menacing toothy

grin or piranha swarming.

It's not the stone wall terracing,

not the blood soaked steps

of looming temples.

Jaguars, verdant canyon rapids,

the ponchos, cushma

and petticoats.

Perhaps the endless chain

of mountains or the volcanoes

that whisper to the clouds,

but no, it is the color

of the countryside,

of the flora and the fauna

and the people and their dress.

It is faces,

in the smiles.

It is mine to see, to touch

to behold, but to have it

is to walk on the moon

and is chilling and

not advised for any

beyond those dwelling

in the areas between--a

subcutanian mist driven

abode inneroutside the realm

of fear or elation.

Beware the graft and

Machu Picchu receptor

plug downloads, cilia

enhancements, as the

rampant dendrite

despoiler shall

encumber

and will

shut

you

up

.

Theme Thursday, A Late Cinquain ending?

Coming
Into my wits
The pieces start to click
The knife wound in my side was mute,
Pain quit.

Nowhere

Was Jack to be,

He'd meshed inside you see

It's plain to know he always was

Part me.

This house

I stumbled on

I'd lost my way within

A Dante's home where I would pay

My sin.

Now my
Guarded secret
My other half interred
Was working to break free of me
Alert.

Fireflies
Buzz around me
They led me to a hole
A passageway to who knows where,
My soul?

Before /I scramble out/
I reach up to my right/
From there I take a jar contains/
One eye.

I'm Jack/
I say to I /
And now this house I know;/
It's where I've brought my souvenirs/
For show.

Somewhere
A stranger stands
Not knowing what her fate
Or that her Jack is lurking near--
I'm late!

....is this the horrible ending, or just a mistake? For past episodes look under 'cinquain' over to the right on the sometin' sometin' sidebar. Or >click<