BITS & PIECES

Openers:  There were other

First Ages

before this one

A Bevaur village Archivist named Spriewas a brown rabbit

 self-conscious of her unevenly lengthed, cornstalk ears

carefully folded under a floppy grat baker's hat that had once been her mom's.

She kept emticulous records

shelved within the dusty stacks

 oc cavernous Ryde Hall.

The hall was named

after two of the many who had died

for bevaur.

Spire often womdered what the old goats Kir and Tham Ryde

were really like,

more specifically, she wanted to knpow

what was inside their Ryde hearts

when they stopped.

-- from "The Beast You Are," the title novella from The Beast You Are:  Stories, 2023

Paul Temblay has never been non to shy away from literary risks.  Now he has written an epic (160-page) free-verse anthromorphic poem about in a world in which dogs, cats, rabbits, toads, geese, horses, sheep, hedgehogs, goats, storks, robins, squirrels, and other animals live, if not in harmony, then in casual acceptance of each other.   It is a world in which a select few are casually destroying in theirgreed and their quests for power.  A world, perhaps, much like ours..

For centuries, Bevaur has been plagued by the appearance of a gigantic monster, Awn, who appears every thirty years to take a sacrifice from the city.  Three are chosen each year to "voluntarily" offer themselves up as sacrifice; only one will taken by Awn.  These volunteer sacrifices are supposedly chosen by lot by the Council.  This year the three are children:  Magg, an eight-year-old dog (a spritz mix), Tol, a ten-year-old toad (quiet and fond of red stockings and small hats), and Mereth, a fourteen-year-old cat (of unknown mix and a secret psychopath).  Mereth had hoped the moster would select her so she could carve her way down his throat in blood.  But Awn took tol, leaving Mereth disappointed and Magg vowing to somehow find a way to stop Awn from ever taking another sacrifice.

Watching the ceremony gleefully were members of the Cult of Awn, a robed and masked sect vying for power in Bevaur.  At the end of the ceremony, the Cult members throw down their robes and masks and head off, either to their homes or to barrooms, leaving their discards to be cleaned up the next morning.  That evning, however, Mereth retreives one of the masks.  She takes it home and paints a lion's face on it.  This gives her warped mind some kind of power and five years later, wearing the mask, she kills her father in the bloodiest way possible.  Mereth is not suspected and the murder becomes the first committed by the soon-to-be legendary Bevaur Butcher.  Dozens of animals of all types and all stations are killed in the ensuing years, with no clue as to who the Butcher might be.

The years pass and soon the time for Awns' reappearance and a new sacrifice approaches.  Tol's sister Pen is determined to avenge her brother and seeks out the monster's lair, supposedly somewhere in the north.  With her are Magg and Magg's former lover; Pen's husband has remained at home tking care of her two children.  Pen is able to locate Awn, sleeping under the earth, and manages to wound the beast with a poison arrow.  But Awn kills Magg's former boyfriend and takes off.  Meanwhile, the Cult, which has grown in power, has held a rally in advance of the thrity-year sacrifice.  Merith infiltrates the rally and begins killing Cult members indiscriminately.  She then goes to Pen's home and slaughters Pen's husband and their two young children.  The sacrifices that year are three vocal opponents of the Cult, supposedly "chosen by random," but an anquished Pen pulls rank and takes the place of one of them, hoping to be able to kill Awn at last.  Her ploy does not work and Pen nis destroyed.

The next thirty years brings economic, social, and ecological ruin to Bevaur.  Magg is now old and ying.  Mereth has become senile and has forgotten she was once the Bevaur Butcher, although there have been dozens of copycats to take up the slaughter.  Now in their twilight, can either of then stop the monster Awn?

This is a nifty, complicated, and detailed story, liberally sprinkled with Tremblay's imagined world's history and lore.  Immensely readable and page-turning, "The Beast You Are" is also a cautionary tale whose dystopian values hit very close to home.

Tremblay has always been a risk-taker and his books are all worth your time.  He is the author of the well-received crime novels The Little Sleep and No Sleep Till Wonderland, both festuring P.I. Msark Genevich.  His novel A Head Full of Ghosts won the 2015 Bram Stoker Award for Best Horror Novel and has been optioned for film.  Disappearnace at Devil's Rock won the 2017 British Fantasy Award for Best Horror Novel.  The Cabin at the End of the World won both the 2019 Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel and the Locus Award for Best Horror Novel; it was adapted as the 2023 film Knock at the Cabin, directed by M. Night Shyamalan.  Recent novels include Survivor Song and The Pallbearers Club.  Small press publications include The Harlequin & The Train (Necropolitan Press, 2016), Swallowing a Donkey's Eye (ChiZine Publications, 2012), and, as "P.K. Jones" (a jpoint pseudonym with Stephen Graham Jones), Floating Boy and the Girl Who Could Not Cry (ChiZine Publications, 2014).  His collections include Growing Thong and Other Stories and The Beast You Are:  Stories.

Incoming:

• "Daniel Boyd" (Dan Stumpf, Aesop's Travels.  Western.  "He had the mind of a child and the hands of a killer.  They rode out with Aesop on a journey of Murder and revenge -- the bartnder, the old scout, the outlaw, the gambler...They rode with Aesop TO STOP HIM FROM KILLING AGAIN."  
• John Carnell, editor, New Writings in SF 9.  Science fiction anthology with 7 stories.  Carnell edited 21 volumes in this landmark series, which was followed by further 9 volumes edited by Kenneth Bulmer.  This is the British edition; an Americna edition ot the series was published by Bantam books for nine volumes; however, the final three volumes in the Bntam series differed considerably from the British editions, dropping stories and adding others from latter volumes of the UK series. 
• John Creasey, Introducing the Toff.  Mystery.  The Toff is the Honourable Richard Rollison, an upper class crime solver, who was featured in nearly 60 works by Creasey and remains one of his most popular characters.  As one can tell from the title, this is the first Toff book, publuished nin 1938 (although the character first saw print in "The Black Cicle,: The Thriller #252, December 2, 1933).  "While returning home from a cricket match at his father's home, the Honourable Richard Rollison -- alias the Toff -- comes across an accident which proves to be a mystery.  As he delves deeper into the matter with his usual perseverance and thoroughness, murder and suspense form the backdrop for a fast moving and exciting adventure."
• Peter Dickinson, Walking Dead.  Mystery.  "david Fox, a young lab researcher whose chief occupation is traiing rats, begins work on the Caribbean island of Hog's Cay only to discover that he has been thrown into a complex maze of political corruption, revolution, the occult, and murder."  Dickinson's mysteries tend to be sui generis, and uniformly good.
• Alan Dean Foster & Eric Frtank Russell, Design for Great-Day.  SF novel by Foster, expanding Russell's novella (Planet Stories, January 1953; aldo published as "The Ultimate Invader").  "when a strange starship appears m ysteriously in a distant alien world, bearing onoly a single human and his bee-like extraterrestial companion, the powerful warlord of that world laughs at the stranger's preposterous demand:  End an all-out war with an interstellar rival, or face devastating consequences.  But James Lawson, emissary from an intergalactic federation of advanced races, means every word he says, and has the resources to enforce them, whatever the cost."
• ???Lee Goldberg, Diagnosis Murder:  Last Word and Diagnosis Murder:  Waking Nighmare.  Two of three books ordered online from a vendor; the third book arrived a couple of weeks ago, but these two have not shown up yet.  I'm trying to track them down now.  Where they are and whether I will ever recieve them is anybody's guess. 
• Erle Stanley Gardner, Hot Cash, Cold Clews.  A recent collection of Lester Leith stories, about a Robin Hood of Crime, who continually thwarts the efforts of the police to capture him despite the fact that they have placed an undercover agent as Leith's valet.  And Behind the Mask, a collection of four stories featurng Bob Crowder, a crime-fighting private detective who wers a mask.
• W. F. Harvey, The Double Eye. a collection of "all thirty of Harvey's uncanny tales," including the classic "August Heat" and "The Beast with Five Fingers."  Harvey (1885-1937) was a World War I hero and a physician who, despite ill helth caused by his military service, published many short stories and essays, as well as a cheerful and good-natured memoir."
• G. Legman, editor, The Limerick:  1700 Examples, with Notes, Variants and Index.  The actual count is 1739 limericks, just about all of them not safe for work.  Published in 1969, I actually once had a copy of this book, but it went walkabout (as many of my books tended to do over time).  The kids found this in a used book store and bought it as a birthday gift for me, but I don't think they actually read any of the limericks, or they would have have been too embarassed to give it to me.  Unlike the Magrath book listed below, I am not giving an example of the poems therein.
• Attica Locke, Bluebird Bluebird.  Edgar-winning mystery novel.  "East Texas plays by itsown rules -- a fact that Darren Mathews, a black Texas Ranger knows all too well.  Deeply ambivalent about growing up black in the Lone Star State, he was the first in his family to lwave Texas as soon as he could,  But then duty called him home.  In the middle of a personal crisis that has put both his job and his marriage in jeopardyt, Darren takes to Highwat 59 on the trail of two seemingly related murders -- a black lawyer from Chicago and a local white woman -- that have stirred up a hornet's nest of resentment in the small town of Lark.  Darren must solve their murders before the town's long-simmering racial tensions erupt." 
• Gary Lovisi, A Mystery, Crime & Noir Notebook.  Almost fifty articles by a man who knows the subject better than almost anyone else.
• Bentley Little, The Store.  Horror.  "Juniper, Arizona, is an off-the-ramp desert town the retail giant called The Store has chosen for its new location.  It has everything you could possibly want under one roof, at unbelievable prices.  But this place demands something of its customers that goes beyond brand loyalty.  At The Store, one-stop shopping has become last-stop shopping...Bill Davis is the only one in town who senses the evil lurking within The Store.  But he can';t stop his two teen-age daughters from taking jobs there and fallincg under the frightening influence of its sadisti manager.  When Bill finally takes a stand, he'll get much more than he bargained for -- at a  terrifying cost."  A film adaptation of The Store has been in development since 2007; don't hold your breath.
• Arthur Machen, Ritual and Other Stories.  A revised edition that collects some of the author's most elusive short horror and supernatural fiction.  The Secret of the Sangraal and Other Writings.  A collection of essays, including those from Dog and Duck (1924), Notes and Queries (1926), Tom O'Bedlam and His Song (1930), Bridles and Spurs (1951), and A Note on Poetry (1949)
• Myler Magrath, The Book of Irish Limericks.  From 1986, a thin paperback of 149 limericks.  Some are mildly lewd, some depend on reading them with an Irish accent, some are dated band some are just plain meh.  "Near the Barracks there lives a young lass,/Who is said to have two breasts of brass./A soldier who bit her,/Found in one a transmitter,/For she works for the news house of Tass!"  A birthday gift.
• "Sarban"  (John W. Wall), The Doll Maker and Other Tales of the Uncanny.  The title novella was reprinted by Ballantine Books in 1960 and is an A. Merritt-eque fantasy.  This addition includes two other stories.  Ringstones and Other Curious Tales.  Again, the title novella was reptinted by Ballantine in 1961.  This edition includes five additional stories.  The Sacrifice and Other Stories.  Four novellas unpublished during the author's lifetime.
• Rex Stout, A Prize for Princes.  An early romantic melodrama. first published in 1914.  "Aline Solini -- a beautiful Russian adventuress who has abandoned her Russian hu8sband and is now in search of greater conquests in Europe -- arrives in Marisis, in the decadent days on the eve of World War I.  She has been rescued by Richard Stetton, the wealthy playboy son of an American millionaire, who is on a trip to Europe to discover himself.  Instead, the somewhat dim-witted Stetton falls into Aline's clutches, and she uses him and his money to win her way into fashionable society.   Once she is accepted by the elite, her schemes move her closer and closer to the throne."
• __________, Seed on the Wind.  Update:  I reported that this book, which I preordered, would arrive in November.  Oops!  At the last minute, eagle eyes at Hard Case Crime noted that the book's spine read "SEED ON THE WIIND" so all copies were pulped and a new, corrected cover and spine were p[roduced, slipping the publication date back a month to December.  A part of me is secretly longing for another error because I would love to have a book by Rex Stout titled Seed on the Wine.
• Mervyn Wall, The Unfortunate Fursey and The Return of Fursey.  Two classic fantasies about a monk apprenticed to a sorcerer who suffers adventures with poltergeists and strange beings, including the Devil.
• F. Paul Wilson, Double Dose.  Duad Book 2, which picks up right after Double Threat, which was a major rewrite and reimagining of Wilson's LaNague Federation short story "Pard" (which in turn was expanded to the novel Healer -- the revised story placed Double Threat directly in Wilson's "Secret History of the World," which includes his "Adversary' cycle, his Repaiorman Jack books, and his ICE trilogy, and reveal a plan to bring the Vsistors back to Earth.  Double Dose incorporates the theme of his Wardenclyffe and the secrets of Nicola Tesla's tower as an isidious malady claims moore and more victims every day, leading to a confrontation over the Salton Sea.  Does that make everything clear now?

It's Beginning to Sound a Lot Like..."  It was just a few days after Halloween when I noticed that one of the local radio stations had begun playing non-flippin'-stop Christmas songs.  I like Christmas-holiday-winter songs as much as the next guy, but. really?  I call too soon on this entire nonsense.

In that spirit (or lack of it), I set out in search of the worst Christmas songs ever recorded, in the hopes that I might convince that local station to begin playing them.  there are many such lists on the internet, but I found this one from timeout.com particularly appalling:

"Do They Know It's Christmas?  by Band Aid 20.     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0YOZQgU7bU

"Funky Funky Christmas" by New Kids on the Block.     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AH5tSrNi6Dk

"The Christmas Shoes" by New Song.     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJcPVB-we7g&t=71s

"Christmas Tree" by Lady Gaga and Space Cowboy.     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAE8QV-iWvs

"Ragin' Cajun Redneck Christmas" by the Robertsons.      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AXLb1eer2Y

"Drummer Boy" by Justin Bieber and Busta Rhymes.     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8IlIC7lasU

"I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" by Gayla Peevey.     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjPm0o04lGE

"Spin Me a Christmas" by Aqua.      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1yU6N0SdWc

"What Can You Get a Wookiee for Christma (When He Already Owns a Comb?) by The Star Wars Intergalactic Droid Choir and Chorale.     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqpMr8Nwhi4

"Millennium Prayer" by Cliff Richard.     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mL9yDb134Rk

{Any Beatles Christmas song].  So let's try this one:      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REQ5UA9bzso

"Christmas Wrapping" by Spice Girls.     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmI7hPBfm30

[Anything involving dogs or cats].  So here's a fallback for this one:     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xam01uaj6Vg

"Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays" by NSYNC.     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKj92352UAE

"Please Daddy (Don't Get Drunk This Christmas)"  by John Denver.  (A favorite of my children when they were younger)     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3DQdGMI2vo

"Christmas Lights" by Coldplay.     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1rYmzQ8C9Q

"Have a Cheeky Christmas" by The Cheeky Girls.     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzhdeMahaTM

"Baby, It's Cold Outside" by John Legend and Kelly Clarkson.     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I776VyXJab4

"Christmas Conga" by Cyndi Lauper.     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhCTGkc-UCQ

"Santa Baby" by Madonna.     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wAyZZTq7E4

"All I Want for Christmas Is You (Superfestive)" by Mariah Carey and Justin Bieber.     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGFNmEOntFA

"Don't Shoot Me Santa" by The Killers.     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cglLJJ0Czo8

"Christmas Time (Don't Let the Bells End) by The Darkness.     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrVg1toMzuo

"Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" by Bruce Springsteen.     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSgEDKjmT5o

"Wonderful Christmastime"  Paul McCartney and Wings.      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7tyNgLjrWA

So there you have it -- twenty-five misfires, missteps, and misinterpretations.  What do you think?  What horrid Christmas/holiday songs should be added to the list?

More Songs:  On this day in 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected the 16th President of the United States of America.  This was the campaign song that helped his election, courtesy of the great Ronnie Gilbert:    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxWwDgOj0oE

Lincoln won garnering 40% of the vote in a four -way election against John C. Breckinridge, John Bell, and Stephen A, Douglas.  Lincoln's supporters went all out with songs about their candidate; O could find no really popular songs in favor of the other three candidates.  John Bell's Constitutional Party advocated for a unified country and against the threatened dissolution of the country by Southerners.  Song for the Union" typified that feeling.  (It should be noted tht Everett was bell's running mate.)  The song goes, in part:

"Let Lincoln go and split his rail,

   But he cannot split the Union;

'Twas put together with wrought nails

   By our sires who were soon ones;

Let Douglas, Breckinridge, and all,

  With their platforms, go to thunder;

For Bell and Everett rolls the ball

   That will make them all knock under.

"Defenders of Old Treason Brown

   Ought to all be swinging

On some tall tree not far from town, 

   With the knell of treason ringing.

Freemen ought to all rejoice

   At the end of all such traitors,

That dare to raise up treason's voice

   In defence of treason's capers.

"Old Independence Bell should toll

   The knell of dissolution,

Each corner posted up in gold

   Should be our 'Constitution;'

Each parent should their children teach

   'Our Country's Declaration,'

And guard it from a foeman's reach,

   The Bulwark of our nation."

Not as catchy as "Lincoln and Liberty" when set to music and sung, I'm afraid.

Meet the Press:  The venerable NBC news show is 76 years old today.  It was created by Martha Roundtree, who served as the show's first moderator, and Lawrence Spivak, and followed a two-year introduction on radio begun in 1945 as American Mercury Presents:  Meet the Press (American Mercury was a magazine purchased by Spivak in 1935) after Spivak asked Roundtree to critique plans for a new radio show.  When Meet the Press aired on television in 1947, the radio program changed its name to match the television show.  Roundtree remained the moderator until 1953, followed by Ned Brooks, who remained moderator until 1963.  Spivak then took over, retiring in 1975 (in a special one-hour edition that featured sitting president Gerald Ford).  The next moderator was Bill Monroe, who stayed in the post until 1984, and was replaced with Roger Mudd and Marvin Kalb as co-hosts.  Succeding hosts Chris Wallace,and Garrick Utley.  In 1991, Tim Russert took over, and continued until his death in 2008; Russert was the longest-serving moderator in the program's history.  Following Russert's death, Tom Brokaw became the interim moderator and David Gregory became the new permanent moderator late in 2008.  Viewership began to slide and by 2014, NBC was searching for a new moderator; one of those they approached as Jon Stewart, who later said, "My guess is they were casting as wide and as weird a net as they could.  I'm sure part of them was thinking, 'Why don't we just make it a variety show?"   They did not make it a variety show, however, and in 2014, Chuck Todd became the program's moderator.  Todd left the program last year and was replaced by current host Kristen Welker.-- the first female moderator since Martha Roundtree.

Sally:  Today is the birthday of Sally Field, former Gidget  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxWwDgOj0oE) and Flying Nun (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc7BQusAkUE), and much, much more.  My image of her stepfather -- stuntman, former Tarzan, Range Rider, and Yancy Derringer -- was forever tarnished when Field accused him in her 2008 memoir of sexually abusing her as a child.  Kudos to Field for coming back from that.

It's Nacho Ordinary Holiday:  Today is National Nacho Day!  To celebrate, here are five yummy recipes for you to try:

https://homemadeonaweeknight.com/2020/11/06/national-nacho-day-5-different-nacho-styles-with-recipes/

Bored of Education:  A 1946 Little Lulu cartoon:

https://archive.org/details/LLBoredOfEducation

Hmm:  An angel appeared before my brother and said that, because he was such a cool guy, the Heavens have decided to give him a gift.  He could either choose infinite wisdom, eternal youth and beauty, or infinite wealth.  Without hesitation he hose infinite wisdom.  "Done!" the angel said, and faded away, leaving only a light yellow halo about his head.  I was curious about his new knowledge and asked him to say something.  He said, "I should have taken the money."

Florida Man:

•  Florida Couple Natalie Fonesca and Rafis Reynolds have taken togetherness to a new extreme.  They are accused of attempted murder, armed carjacking, armed robbery, and kidnapping after they slashed a man's throat and threw him off a bridge in Escambia County (just a few mile from where I live).  The victim had met Fonesa on an online site and agreed to have dinner and hang out with her.  He went to Fonesca's house, where she introduced him to Reynolds, saying that he was her uncle.  The three of them then went in the victim's car, heading to his house  they allegedly stole his shoes, his, phone,hois mpn ey, and his car, slashed his throat, and tossed him off a bridge.  The man, however, survived and was able to swim to shore, where he flagged down a deputy.  The stolen car was late found on Rte. 98 West after it had been set on fire.  The current condition of the victim is unknown.
• Florida Man Timothoes Powell was arrested after trying to circumcize his two-year-old cousin while babysitting in Daytpona Beach, according to police.  The child's mother was at work and the grandparents were home but sleeping at the time.  A home security camera shows Powell trying to change the boy's diaper, then walking away with "Something in his hand."  Powell returned to finish changing the diaper while the toddler was screaming.  Earlier footage showed Powell yelling at the boy, squirting water from a bottle at him, and threatening to put soap in his mouth if he wasn't quiet.
• Florida Company Roof E-Z has a November special advertised.  Buy a new roof and they will throw in a free turkey and an AR-15 as part of their "Roof and Gobble" promotion.  Perhaps the AR-15 is meant to put down the turkey before it is cooked.
• There's nothing strange about him, Florida Man Tony Nixon, 60, of Ocala, insisted.  Nixon has been charged with 20 counts of enhanced possession of child pornography, possission of meth, and possession of marijuana.  The images discovered on his laptop showed prepubescent children engaging in sexual acts and being sexually battered.  He told deputies that he was "not sexually attracted to children."  They did not believe him.
• Beloved Florida Resident Berani, a fifteen and a half-year-old Sumatran tiger at the Zoo Miami, had to be euthanized thjis past week after a "heartbreaking" diagnosis of  spleen cancer.  Berani leaves behind two cubs, Satu (born 2015) and Ndari (born 2021) from his relationship with tigress Leeloo.  There are less than 500 Sumtran tigers remaining in the wild, making the death of any tiger even more distressing.
• Florida Man and Clay County Fire Rescue firefighter Sean Evert Carpenter, 36, was arrested on the job and charged with four counts of lewd and lascivious molestation of a victim less than twelve years old.  The victim was an aquaintance of Carpenter but has no familial relation connection.  School authorites recognized distinct signs of traume in the child, who admited the molestation to parents earlier in October.  Sheriff H. D. 'Gator" DeLoach was blisreing in his comments about Carpenter:  "This piece of trash is a disgrace not only to his employers but also to anyhone in public service who proudly sacrifce their lives to serve others.  He took full advantage of his position as a trusted first responder to defile a child's innocence."  Clay County Fire Rescue has yet to respond.
• It had to happen.  The first-ever Florida Man Games are set for February 24, 2024, in St. Augustine.  Among the challenges will be the "Evading Arrest Obstacle Course" (where participants will be chased by real police officers), a weaponized pool noodle mud duel, beer belly Florida sumo, a catagory 5 cash grab, and a "catalytic converter, two bikes, and a handful of copper pipes race against time.  The judges for the Games have been announced:  Dan "Nitro" Clark and Lori "Ice" Fetrick of American Gladiators.

Good News:

•  Three friends all over 100 reveal secrets to a long life:  "Happiness, Staying active, and keep a boy-toy nearby"      https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/3-friends-all-over-100-reveal-secrets-to-long-life-including-boy-toy-nearby/
• Cop saves unconscious driver from burning truck:  "Either I'm going to dis here with him, or I'm going to get him out."      https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/cop-saves-unconscious-driver-from-burning-truck-im-either-going-to-die-here-with-him-or-get-him-out-watch/
• Ring camera video catches trick-or-treaters refilling empty can      https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/ring-camera-catches-teenage-trick-or-treaters-refilling-empty-candy-bowl-it-feels-really-good-watch/dy bowl
• Scientist engineered a bacteria to eat plastic bottles and transform them into useful liquid      https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/scientists-engineered-a-bacteria-to-eat-plastic-bottles-and-transforming-them-into-useful-liquids/
• Ocean-lover saves 1000 seals off Britain and even builds them a hospital      https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/ocean-lover-saves-1000-seals-off-britain-and-even-built-them-a-hospital/
• Deaf children are the first humans to have hearing pathays restored in dramatic demonstration of new gene theray      https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/deaf-children-are-first-humans-to-have-hearing-pathway-restored-in-dramatic-demonstration-of-new-gene-therapy/

Something to Remember:  "What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside you."  -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Today's Poem:

Argh - Daylight Savings Time Ends -- 2 AM November 6 2022

Hour hands of o'clock get set back

sixty minutes gaining extra hour of Autumn

round about this same day of November

every year, what a bum

er, and inconvenient truth diverged

from this wayfaring chum

purposely manipulating a hold

over sans yesteryear

(first implemented in the United States

with Standard Time Act of 1918,

a wartime measure for seven months

during World War I in the interest

of adding more daylight hours

to conserve energy resources)

doth rat a tat tat drum

a plain sensation of jet lag

(with earthling in the balance)

as if flying backwards

within Herbert George Wells

celebrated time machine

at warp speed from

this station, where bumpy ride

invariably finds me

feeling ticked off and glum

in no mood to rhyme, ir be funny,

cuz I recall experiencing

exactly xlii previous instances

being forced to spring ahead

when countless months before viz

Sunday, March 14, 2022 at 2:00 am

one twenty fourth of said day

surrendered to Father Time

finding yours truly juiced barely equipped

to cope mentally, physically,

and spiritually whipsawed tantamount

with impossible mission

to get smart and gather scattered wits

sun tide, and express mood as hoe hum

analogous to coal (essence)

raked over me noggin

mining an inducement

for emergency convoy,

when pitched from

sea to figurative shining seagram

defunct company name brand

once the largest owner

of alcoholic beverage lines in the world

nsync with Johnnie Walker scotch

quite the gin tonic he brewed,

where live yik yak

(going ticktock) wired vanguard

trulia tried optimism to hum

a lively Irish air, cuz I

(Bailey) of Bailey Banks & Biddle

the crown jewel scion

scion of a wealthy family

swallowed down sorrow

regarding cremains of mother

her inert ashes boxed

for more'n an (eat turn) eternity

like talcum powder went -- me mum

Chris Ann her namesake

bling boviation, emasculation,

insinuation, nomination, termination

once worth matchless peerage,

now pitched numb

skull into morass

of temporary confusion, where plumb

line delineating circadian rhythm offset,

when athwart pilot rum

dire straits found motley crue bickering

where Lilliputians slum

bring wherein Gulliver's Travels

landed me upon islets of langerhans

(endocrine cells scattered

throughout the pancreas)

defiantly, ham-handedly, liberally thumb

ming nose, where body, mind & soul

weeknd viz a bully did cower

hence mister clock

who got hijacked to Cuba

3600 seconds per hour

experienced head, thorax

and abdomen dimishing in power

wrought indistinguishable

Whitsuntide as sour

grapes of wrath imposing

ill fitting dea legs,

which folded like a faulty tower

crumbling skeletal carapice,

quickly resoundingly surrendered

and back slid vis a vis

space/time continuum did devour

Black hole (sun) event horizon indeed

kept lock step as das joint mill hoard

Sucker punched the band wagon

of father tiem, whose riffs a silent chord

nsync with atomic fractional second bored

pesky quirky shenanigans

toying with chronometers

counter point of view shifted

to oppose this minute accord.

-- Matthew Harris

(Yes, I turned my back one hour.  I was really tired so I considered turning it back two hoours, but decided to go with tradition.)