Friday, January 31, 2025

Dance of the Coochies



AI madness but with a recording of the 70s Minneapolis band The Explodo Boys. The group's basement rehearsal space was infested by ‘coochies’—an unknown species of flying insects—that enjoyed the music, occassionally landing on the microphone while someone was singing.

By Professor Batty


Comments: 1 


Wednesday, January 29, 2025

Paradise Lost

20 Years Ago on FITK
In a simpler time, teen-aged girls would volunteer to help out at hospitals and nursing homes. They wore red and white striped uniforms, hence the name ‘candy striper’. They didn’t get paid, I guess it was sort of a pre-nursing thing to do.

At any rate, I was heading home from an errand downtown one day, and boarded the #8 bus. On it was my older sister, a college student, who was coming home for the week-end. I nodded to her and went to sit in the back (when you were 15, you ALWAYS sat in the back although I don’t know why) and then I saw her. A vivacious girl, about my age, brunette with tight (natural?) curls, inviting blue eyes and freckles. She made eye contact and indicated with a toss of her head that I should sit down NEXT to her. We evidently talked, I probably just said “ah - ah -ah” but she kept looking at me as she continued talking and began to bounce in her seat. This behavior was beyond my understanding. I noticed that her posture was very tense, and her back had a definite arch to it. She asked where I was getting off. She said she only lived a few blocks further… would I like to come along with her?

At this point, about thirty million synapses in my pubescent brain were firing, smoldering and fusing in a huge, hormone-fueled meltdown. She was still bouncing. My stop came, my sister was exiting the rear door just in front of us, should I go? Should I stay? Go? Stay? Go? Stay? My sister opened the rear door...

I went.

Later on, at supper, my sister said: “Who was that girl on the bus?”

“Oh, it was only a candy striper… ”

By Professor Batty


Comments: 0 


Monday, January 27, 2025

Echoes

Waiting for Lady Gaga, Reykjavík, 2012

By Professor Batty


Comments: 0 


Friday, January 24, 2025

The Serial Killer Guide to San Francisco


A Mystery by Michelle Chouinard

Well! It's been quite a while since I partook in the literary smörgåsbord that the San Francisco mystery genre has become.

The granddaughter of a serial killer shows readers another side of the beloved city in this very readable mystery. Although murders do take place, the other side of SF is not the one of common criminals but, rather, high society and the divide between old money and new in the 21st century. Capri Sanzio, gives serial killer tours of the city, she’s been interested in the topic since she discovered she’s the granddaughter of serial killer William ‘Overkill Bill’ Sanzio.  A copycat killer has struck, putting the case is back in the news. Capri’s ex-mother in law, Sylvia, has just cut off funding for Capri’s daughter’s tuition,  forcing Capri to document the old case with a podcast and a book and hopefully earn some money. Capri soon finds herself at the heart of the police’s investigation: she and her daughter are prime suspects.

The high society scene of old-money San Francisco meets high-tech, no one is above breaking the law for their own purposes, and Capri’s delving into the paper (and digital) trail of these shenanigans gives to story its momentum, the characterizations are somewhat flat.

Reading this book is like eating a bland salad—you won’t feel satiated—but you also won’t have to suffer indigestion after having read it. Marginal recommendation.

By Professor Batty


Comments: 0 


Wednesday, January 22, 2025

Brave Little Yaris

20 Years Ago on FITK



It is usually a bit of an adventure renting a car overseas.

The models have different names, or they may have the same name yet be a completely different car. Or, for some real fun: a right-hand drive with a manual transmission. With globalization, there is more uniformity now, but still there can be surprises. In the U.S., Toyota’s smallest car is the Echo. Overseas (in Iceland at any rate) it is the Yaris. Very much like the Echo, yet somehow different: maybe it's the grill-work, the proportions, and certainly the moniker.

Now the roads in Iceland are of three kinds, Paved (very nice), gravel (black lava gravel, usually ok) and other. I picked up my perky little white Yaris and headed south on 42, to take some pictures in the Reykjanesfólkvangur (a volcanic park of severe beauty.) As the ruggedness of the scenery increased, so did the weather until a gale force wind and torrents of driving rain escalated into what is called in Iceland skemmtilegur. Still, my trusty Yaris held fast. The rain finally did ease up a bit, so I turned west on 427 to see a geothermal area and swing back via the Blue Lagoon. Leaving the hot springs (boiling hot!) the gravel road now snaked through miles of an ancient lava flow.

I took some more pictures here, and then noticed that the road ahead had become a small river! Now, I had seen a few cars come from that way, but none were quite as small as my rental. I carefully proceeded with a vision of my being swept away playing in an endless loop in my fevered imagination. Finally I was through! Then the road turned from OK into other. After a few miles, I found myself driving through a working quarry, complete with heavy equipment. The road was marked by flags every 50 feet or so, but you could also judge where it was by the fact that the actual excavation site looked smoother than the road proper (just drive on the rough spots, right?) And then a GREAT BIG STEEP HILL - WITH A BLIND INTERSECTION AT THE TOP! All these potential mishaps my brave little Yaris handled in stride.

So… I would definitely recommend this car to anyone with a sense of adventure and little luggage - my camera bags and tripod took up all the rear seat very nicely.

No AC though, I guess that it's not really needed in ICEland.

By Professor Batty


Comments: 2 


Monday, January 20, 2025

Hair

Where is the line between visual reality and abstraction?

With tweaking in modern digital imaging, the closer the viewer looks, the less one sees.

By Professor Batty


Comments: 0 


Friday, January 17, 2025

Wikipedian Meet-Up

I actually got out of the house for a social occasion!

Minnesota Wikipedians got together last Wednesday for a 'meetup' celebrating Wikipedia's 24th birthday. Lots of new faces (I only saw one person from the last meetup I attended-in 2019) and lots of young people. Most of them were tyros, but everybody has to start somewhere. I was the oldest there and probably had the longest experience of editing. The organizer was pleasantly surprised at the turnout (I'm the ghostly face behind the man in the blue shirt), he had originally booked a room for 8 people!

There was food, including tater tot hotdish and green Jello salad. I brought my famous sourcream molasses cookies that were quickly scarfed up. A young man approached me and asked if I was willing to be interviewed. I gave him my email address; time will tell if that social interaction comes to fruition.

By Professor Batty


Comments: 0 


Wednesday, January 15, 2025

Monster from the Radio Tube

20 Years Ago on FITK

Vacuum tubes (valves in the UK) are almost a thing of the past.

There are still four remaining uses for these elegant electronic devices:

1. Monitors & TVs. These seem to be on the way out, too heavy, full of lead, and being replaced by a variety of new technologies. Still in use by millions.
2. Microwave ovens have a tube that you never see (it is carefully shielded‚ these tubes put out a lot of energy.) Also used by millions.
3. Radio transmitters: lots of power handling, not for domestic use.
4. Audio amplifiers - mostly guitar amps and esoteric audiophile gear. While there is still a difference between tubes and modern solid-state equipment, I find it amusing to see musicians playing through 50 or 60 year old amplifiers.

When I was young, transistors were just coming into the marketplace, most radios had these glowing glass jars in the back, each like a little ship-in-the-bottle or a snow globe, except instead of a yare vessel or a bucolic scene, there was a strange metal sculpture inside, the mad construct of a demented engineer. Some tubes had a blue glow that would pulse in sync with the music, all of them were HOT. My friend Andy even wrote a short story about one of these artifacts coming to life—growing in size and terrorizing the neighborhood. This update on “War Of The Worlds” ended with the malevolent tube being banished to the moon, where you could see its ruddy glow in the dark areas of a partial moon. In later years, I actually went the trouble of learning how tubes work, ultimately building my own guitar amplifier.

Every so often, if I am playing my guitar with the lights out, I’ll take a little peek at those “monsters” in the back of my amp, and recall Andy’s story with a smile.

By Professor Batty


Comments: 0 


Monday, January 13, 2025

Nine Muses

Polyhymnia:
Calliope:
Melpomene:
Terpsichore:
Clio and Euterpe:
Erato:
Thalia:
Urania:

By Professor Batty


Comments: 0 


Friday, January 10, 2025

Fire

For L.A.

By Professor Batty


Comments: 0 


Wednesday, January 08, 2025

Third Street Theater

20 Years Ago on FITK

When I was quite young, my mother (who definitely had a hands-off approach to child rearing) often left me under the charge of my big sister. This was a pretty good deal for a 5-year-old. My sister was the queen of the neighborhood, all enemies and alliances, all of the sub-teen power brokering—all of it, went through her. She had a knack for organizing childhood play, whether it was a game of Starlight Moonlight or a trip to the swamp or a ‘parade’ with wagons and trikes and even a few ‘wild’ animals thrown in (our old tomcat did not approve of that!)

The topper was when she staged her ‘theatricals’. We had some boxes and construction debris left over from a remodeling project. An old blanket draped over a clothesline was the curtain. I was too little to be in the play, so I was pressed into service as the usher. It was toward the end of July, a cloudy, warm evening, where summer's embrace was still felt, even though the nights were lengthening fast. The show was set for 7 p.m. and the neighborhood children (and there were plenty) began to trickle into our back yard. I took their tickets (1 cent, please) and, when the show was ready to begin, I went over to the curtain and gave it a tug. I'm not quite sure but I think the show was some variation on The Brothers Grimm, perhaps Rumpelstiltskin or Rapunzel. The littlest kids were enchanted, the older ones distracted. It got a little darker, the clouds started to look like they meant business.

“Every body go home… its gonna rain… ” and my Dad’s warning voice closed the show.

By Professor Batty


Comments: 0 


Monday, January 06, 2025

The Eternal Dynamic

AI music generated to my lyrics…



The Eternal Dynamic
Adam and Eve to the present
Patterns of human interaction
Boys and girls together yet apart

Getting together with old schoolmates
The old back-and-forth begins anew
A bluff, a challenge, arguments
But made with twinkling eyes…

Oh!

As if you had only stepped out for a minute
Rather than thirty or forty years
Had it really been that long
since you last spoke to each other

And so the facade goes up:
Hiding what you don't want others to know,
But what they do know, what you know
They know … you know they know.

Oh!

All of the joys and disappointments
you had with your first young lover
They defined you and kindled
Your first sparks of passion

You greet each other and talk
But crucial words remain unsaid
Words you couldn't say then
Words you won't say now

Oh!

A moment you share in a dark corner
With your old crush… face to face
Your eyes meet and and then you kiss!
You are both seventeen again

Her kiss is the same…
The memory returns in an instant
When you open your eyes
You are once more both sixty-one

She is smiling, she says, “I love you”
And you say “I love you” too
The words which couldn't be spoken
Are finally said, at last…

Oh!


Click through to YouTube for more information…

By Professor Batty


Comments: 0 


Friday, January 03, 2025

Windmills of Your Mind

Mulder’s Farm, Deuel County, South Dakota

In this drafty shed on an abandoned farm lies this set of blades for a windmill.

Once used to supply groundwater to animals and gardens, the windmill had evidently become obsolete even before the farm’s demise. It was saved, perhaps it had been damaged in a storm, maybe the farmer thought he could rebuild it some day.

That day never came.



Once vibrant fields now overgrown with weeds,
Whispering of agricultural deeds.
The barn poses in a shabby dress,
Its laboring over, it takes a rest.

Rusty plowshares rest in the field,
No longer guided by hands that wield.
The windmill creaks in the restless air,
A sentinel of the past singing there.

A humble farmhouse, abandoned.
Standing in silence, unwanted.
The stone foundation is cool to the touch,
Reminds us of seasons past and such.
A victim of time's embrace,
A portrait of a once-loved place.
What once was real it now seems,
Is just a painting of broken dreams.

By Professor Batty


Comments: 0 


Wednesday, January 01, 2025

The B&B from Hell

20 Years Ago on FITK
In the fifties and most of the sixties, air travel was the province of the well-to-do, with airfares quite high (even compared to today’s inflation-adjusted prices) but toward the end of that era new de-regulations and the rise of low-cost charter flights changed the scene.

So, in the summer of ’73 I found myself waiting to board a round-trip flight to London for the grand total of $168. I had a traveling companion but neither of us had any experience abroad. We waited. And waited. The 7 P.M departure time passed. The new departure time of 11 P.M. passed. As well as the 1 A.M. mark. Finally, at 3 A.M., we boarded, flew into the rising sun, and arrived in Gatwick by late-afternoon. We took the train into London. It was getting late, we booked the only available B&B, “That’ll be the Rowan’s,” the clerk at the lodging placement centre said, with an arched eyebrow. We were so exhausted by then that we would have slept in St. James Park.

We trundled (with luggage) about a mile, finally ending up in a somewhat shabby part of London and found the address. We went to the door and a grim looking woman answered. We explained our needs, and she agreed to let us a room: “Two night minimum, pay in advance.” We agreed and followed her to our ‘room’. When she opened the door, a disheveled drunken man raised his head off the bed. It was a brother-in-law who had just ‘dropped in’. She had another room, and we went in. That one was really more of a prison cell: one high barred window, a bare hanging light bulb, no decorations, two small metal beds with a mattress(?) stuffed with wood shavings covered with a worn sheet and tattered blanket. Oh well, we thought, what are looks—we’ll be sleeping anyway—and after using the W.C. (which really was a closet - about two foot square) we tried to sleep. That was when the choir of watch dogs in the square behind the house began their nightly concert. Then, from the other side of the door, we heard a young girl screaming “Don’t let him touch me! Don’t let him get me!” The landlady's daughter was being molested by her ‘funny uncle’!

Amid this cacophony, we finally, after 36 hours awake, managed to drop off to sleep. We woke early, about 5 A.M. and quickly decided that ANYTHING was better that this. We quietly left without breakfast.

Later that afternoon we actually found a very nice hotel in South Kensington, and spent several days there in a place that was really quite civilized. Since that time, I have spent many nights in B&B's and guesthouses and have found most of them to be wonderful experiences (The Paradise House in Bath is aptly named), but my aspirations of becoming a World Traveler was almost nipped in the bud by THE B&B FROM HELL!

By Professor Batty


Comments: 0 


Click on Month in sidebar for older (or newer) posts ~ All original content © Stephen Charles Cowdery, 2004-2025